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Current Exhibitions

Paintings of Dorothy Hood
March 18 - May 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Sir Winston Churchill: Making Art, Making History
February 20 - May 31, 2024
Virtual
Ansel Adams: Affirmation of Life
December 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Picasso: Beyond the Canvas
October 4, 2023 - April 30, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
No Other Land: A Century of American Landscapes
September 21, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Art of the American West: A Prominent Collection
August 24, 2023 - May 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Alexander Calder: Shaping a Primary Universe
August 23, 2023 - May 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Andy Warhol: All is Pretty
August 17, 2023 - May 31, 2024
Jackson Hole, WY
Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Modern Art, Modern Friendship
July 13, 2023 - April 30, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Florals for Spring, Groundbreaking
May 8, 2023 - May 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
First Circle: Circles in Art
February 14, 2023 - May 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Your Heart’s Blood: Intersections of Art and Literature
September 12, 2022 - March 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Meeting Life: N.C. Wyeth and the MetLife Murals
July 18, 2022 - March 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA
Andy Warhol Polaroids: Wicked Wonders
December 13, 2021 - March 31, 2024
Palm Desert, CA

Archived Exhibitions

2024

Discovering Creativity: American Art Masters
January 10 - March 17, 2024
Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens - West Palm Beach, FL

2023

Figurative Masters of the Americas
January 4 - February 12, 2023
Palm Desert, CA

2022

Abstract Expressionism: Transcending the Radical
January 12, 2022 - January 31, 2023
Palm Desert, CA
Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley: Modern Minds
February 1, 2022 - February 28, 2023
Palm Desert, CA
My Own Skin: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
June 16 - December 31, 2022
Palm Desert, CA
N.C. Wyeth: A Decade of Painting
September 29, 2022 - March 31, 2023
Palm Desert, CA

2021

It Was Acceptable in the 80s
April 27, 2021 - August 31, 2023
Palm Desert, CA
Elaine and Willem de Kooning: Painting in the Light
August 3, 2021 - January 31, 2022
Palm Desert, CA
James Rosenquist: Potent Pop
June 7, 2021 - January 31, 2023
Palm Desert, CA

2019

Paul Jenkins: Coloring the Phenomenal
December 27, 2019 - March 31, 2023
Palm Desert, CA

2018

N.C. Wyeth: Paintings and Illustrations
February 1 - May 31, 2018
Palm Desert, CA
The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill
March 21 - May 30, 2018
Palm Desert, CA
The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill
June 1 - July 27, 2018
San Francisco, CA
The Paintings of Sir Winston Churchill
August 1 - September 16, 2018
Jackson Hole, WY
de Kooning x de Kooning
November 8, 2018 - February 28, 2019
New York, NY
“My work embodies little visions of the great intangible. … Some will say he’s gone mad – others will look and say he’s looked in at the lattices of Heaven and come back with the madness of splendor on him.” – Marsden Hartley

History

While often mentioned in the same breath as Arthur Dove, John Marin, or Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley was America’s first great modern painter of the twentieth century. Between 1912 and late 1915, he produced paintings that synthesized Cubism and modern European trends, mixed in western motifs with mysterious symbols, and achieved a highly personal manner of expression that emulated Cubism yet repurposed its formal character. His was a two-fisted approach that strengthened the fragile geometries of Cubism to create something more tangible and muscular. He might have been a Jackson Pollock-like figure in the years following the next war, but here, with his unique temperament and idealism he offered an alternative path forward for Picasso’s and Braque’s absolutism.

But Hartley was also a highly peripatetic artist. He wandered to virtually every cultural center in a restless quest, a prominent member of the like-minded, pro-modernists at the dawning of Alfred Stieglist’s 291 Gallery in 1909, a weekly invitee to Gertrude Stein’s private studio-mecca often referred to as ‘the first modern museum’ and later, something of a celebrity in Berlin where he comingled with Blue Rider Expressionists, accepted by Wassily Kandinsky, no less, and Franz Marc. An undammed series of stopovers followed his reluctant return to America in December 1915: Provincetown, Bermuda, Taos, Santa Fe, California, among others. Yet his life and career were an odyssey not merely of location, but of a serious act of self-realization unmatched among the annuals of American art history.

When Hartley painted Abstraction the winter of 1916-17, he was engaged in one of the most brazened protean shifts of his career (and there were many). The calm patter of seaside Provincetown and the trip he took with Arthur Dove to Bermuda facilitated the change, but it was America’s anti-German sentiment and subsequent rejection of the colorful pomp and formalistic helmets and regimental insignia of his so-called ‘Germanic Group’ that prompted a turn toward a new form of Cubism that emphasized flat surfaces, overlapping geometric planes, and the primacy of geometric structure rather than the formal study and decomposition of subject matter. These paintings are characteristic of ‘Synthetic Cubism’ and are contemporaneous, if not antecedent to similar works of Picasso, Braque, and Gris. For Hartley, these are truly non-objective, geometric abstractions that no one understood or appreciated, of a sort not to be seen in America for ten years or more. What they did provide Hartley was an opportunity to distance himself from the emotion and pain of his Berlin experience and to explore pure, formal abstraction.

More
  • Alfred Stieglitz, “Marsden Hartley,” 1916, Collection SFMOMA, San Francisco, California.
  • Juan Gris, “The Glass,” 1919, Riverside Museum, Glasgow, Scottland.
  • Marsden Hartley, “Provincetown,” 1916, The Art Institute of Chicago.
  • Marsden Hartley, “Movement, Bermuda,” 1916, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
  • Charles Demuth, “Bermuda no. 2, The Schooner,” 1917, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
  • Marsden Hartley, “A Bermuda Window in a Semi-Tropic Character,” 1917, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco.
“A reaction, to be pleasant, must be simple.” – Marsden Hartley

MARKET INSIGHTS

  • Hartley40169_market
  • The record price for a Marsden Hartley painting at auction was set in May 2019 when “Abstraction” (1912-1913) sold for over $6.74 million USD.

  • That painting sold at auction nearly 10 years earlier (November 2000) for $2.2 million USD, an increase in value of 205.77%.

  • Of the top 5 auction records for Hartley, 4 are from this formative early period before 1920.

Top Results at Auction

“Abstraction” (1912-1913), oil on canvas, 46.5 x 39.8 in. (118.1 x 101 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 22 May 2019 for $6,744,500 USD.
“Abstraction” (1912-1913), oil on canvas, 46.5 x 39.8 in. (118.1 x 101 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 22 May 2019 for $6,744,500 USD.
“Lighthouse” (1915), oil on canvas, 40 x 32 in. (101.6 x 81.3 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 21 May 2008 for $6,313,000 USD.
“Lighthouse” (1915), oil on canvas, 40 x 32 in. (101.6 x 81.3 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 21 May 2008 for $6,313,000 USD.
“Untitled (Still Life)” (1919), oil on board, 32 x 25.7 in. (81.3 x 65.4 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 1 December 2011 for $3,218,500 USD.
“Untitled (Still Life)” (1919), oil on board, 32 x 25.7 in. (81.3 x 65.4 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 1 December 2011 for $3,218,500 USD.
“Painting no. 6” (1913-1913), oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 22 May 2002 for $2,759,500 USD.
“Painting no. 6” (1913-1913), oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 22 May 2002 for $2,759,500 USD.
“Camden Hills from Bakers Island” (1938), oil on board, 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.1 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 19 November 2015 for $2,741,000 USD.
“Camden Hills from Bakers Island” (1938), oil on board, 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.1 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 19 November 2015 for $2,741,000 USD.

Comparable Paintings Sold at Auction

“Abstraction” (1912-1913), oil on canvas, 46.5 x 39.8 in. (118.1 x 101 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 22 May 2019 for $6,744,500 USD.
“Abstraction” (1912-1913), oil on canvas, 46.5 x 39.8 in. (118.1 x 101 cm). Sold at Christie’s New York: 22 May 2019 for $6,744,500 USD.
  • Larger example from the same period

  • Comparable abstract composition

  • Set the record price for Hartley at auction in 2019

“Painting no. 6” (1913-1913), oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 22 May 2002 for $2,759,500 USD.
“Painting no. 6” (1913-1913), oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 22 May 2002 for $2,759,500 USD.
  • Larger example from the same period

  • Similar composition of stacked abstract shapes

  • Sold for over $2.7M at auction 20 years ago

"Antibes, le fort" (1888), oil on canvas, 23.6 x 31.9 in. Sold at Sotheby’s New York: November 2011 for $9,266,500.
“Antibes, le fort” (1888), oil on canvas, 23.6 x 31.9 in. Sold at Sotheby’s New York: November 2011 for $9,266,500.
  • Same size and period

  • Sold for over $1.87M more than 10 years ago

“Berlin Series, no. 1” (c. 1913), oil on canvasboard, 18 x 15 in. (45.7 x 38.1 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 19 May 2010 for $1,762,500 USD.
“Berlin Series, no. 1” (c. 1913), oil on canvasboard, 18 x 15 in. (45.7 x 38.1 cm). Sold at Sotheby’s New York: 19 May 2010 for $1,762,500 USD.
  • Smaller example from the same period

  • Comparable medium, though a darker palette

  • Sold for over $1.76 nearly 12 years ago

Paintings in Museum Collections

“Musical Theme No. 2 (Bach Preludes et Fugues)” (1912), oil on canvas mounted on masonite, 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm), Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid.
“Movements” (1913), oil on canvas, 47 x 46 7/8 in. (119.5 x 119 cm), Art Institute of Chicago.
“Portrait of a German Officer” (1914), oil on canvas, 68 1/4 × 41 3/8 in. (173.4 × 105.1 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
“Movement, Bermuda” (1916), oil on beaver board, 16 1/8 x 11 7/8 in. (41 x 30.2 cm), the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.
“It is never difficult to see images – when the principle of the image is embedded in the soul.” – Marsden Hartley

Image Gallery

Additional Resources

See David Hockney, Dana Schutz, David Salle and more discuss the America’s first great modern painter in “7 Artists on the Life and Work of Marsden Hartley” by Louisiana Channel.
Read about the 2014 exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, “Marsden Hartley: The German Paintings, 1913-1915” in this review in the New York Times review.
Visit “Movement, Bermuda” at the Barnes Foundation in this video on Hartley’s abstract works from the “great Provincetown summer.”

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