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In the late 1920s Hartley painted in southern France where Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne had lived.

Melons reflects Cézanne's methods and approach in the parallel brushstrokes and the mountainous forms of the cloth.

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Marsden Hartley

Melons, about 1927

oil on canvas

19 5/8 x 24 in

Gift of M. Knoedler & Company through Mrs. James W. Fesler

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Born in Lewiston, Maine, Marsden Hartley studied art at the Cleveland School of Art in Cleveland, Ohio and New York at the Chase School and the National Academy of Design.  By 1909 he had his first exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery and became part of the dealer’s progressive circle of modernists that also included Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove and John Marin.  He traveled to Europe in 1912 and worked in Germany under the influence of Expressionism and in Paris where he met Gertrude Stein and was introduced to some important avant-garde artists.  He experimented with Paul Cézanne’s style of modernism and created numerous still life paintings that focused on decorative elements and structure. Hartley returned to the United States to explore American subjects, including Native American designs. The symbolism and spirituality he found in his subjects became an important part of his life and art, resulting in some of his most powerful paintings. Later in his life, Hartley spent several years in the fishing village at Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia where he did a series of portraits of the lobstermen.  He also painted several religious subjects and returned to still lifes adding seascape backgrounds. 

In the late 1920s Hartley lived and painted in Aix-en-Provence, the town in southern France where Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne spent much of his creative life.  There Hartley painted Melons, a still life that reflects his respect for Cézanne’s methods and approach.  While the raspberry and orange hues are Harley’s, the careful, parallel brushstrokes and the mountainous forms of the cloth are indebted to Cézanne. Hartley painting is best appreciated through his statement: “I would rather be sure that I placed two colors in true relationship to each other than to have expressed a wealth of emotionalism gone wrong in the name of richness of personal expression.”  Melons, in its reds and greens is a consummation of Hartley’s quest for this realization.

Reference

Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser.  Marsden Hartley: American Modernist, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN-13: 978-0300097672