Red Tree
1910
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Flora E. H. Shawan from the Ferdinand Howald Collection
Accession Number
1966.33.1
Tags
About this artwork
Marsden Hartleyâs mother died when he was young, and he found comfort and companionship in the countryside around his home. This affinity for nature remained with him his entire life, and he traveled to many countries to paint the landscape. (Kornhauser, Marsden Hartley, 2002) He spent the summer of 1910 in North Lovell, Maine, creating brightly colored images of the mountains and forests. In Red Tree, Hartley placed the viewer at the top of a hill, looking down through the dense trees to a sm...
About the Artist
Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) was one of the most significant and searching figures of American modernism, an artist whose restless travels and personal intensity drove him to synthesize European avant-garde currents with a deeply American sensibility rooted in landscape, loss, and spiritual longing. Born in Lewiston, Maine, he studied at the Cleveland School of Art and later at the National Academy...