Waxenstein
1933
Medium
Graphic Arts-Print
Classification
Graphic Arts-Print
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase
Accession Number
1972.118
Tags
Art Historical Context
Marsden Hartley, a pioneering American modernist painter, captured the dramatic peaks of Bavaria's Waxenstein Mountains in his1933 graphic print *Waxenstein*. Acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum a museum purchase, this work reflects Hartley's deep fascination with European landscapes, honed during his extended stays in Germany in the 1920s. By 1933, amid the Great Depression, Hartley had returned to the U.S., yet his art continued to evoke the rugged beauty and emotional resonance of places like Bavaria, blending personal memory with bold visual expression. As a graphic arts print...
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...