Monday, June 5, 2017

Marsden Hartley’s Maine
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Colby College Museum of Art

The first Marsden Hartley work that resonated with me was a preliminary charcoal drawing of Manawaska at an exhibition of drawings from the collection at the Morgan Library in the mid to late 1980’s. At the time I was studying figure drawing with an artist in New York and when I came face to face with the Hartley I was overwhelmed by the strength of its execution, its force, and its ability to use the human figure in a work of modern art. And I was somewhat amused that the figure did not stand straight but that the axis was tipped to one side as in the work of Cezanne. I was studying the work of Cezanne at that time as well. I decided to become better acquainted with Hartley’s work.

Some twenty years later I came face to face with that painting, Manawaska, Acadian Light-Heavy at the Chicago Art Institute. (In this exhibition plate 118,) Again I was overwhelmed. It is one of those paintings in which the composition, the color, and the execution create an iconic image. While many torso works crop the figure just above the pubic area, Hartley cropped this one just below the genitals, which are then hidden in a black posing strap. We have simultaneously the strength and power of the figure as well as its vulnerability and weakness. We have the modesty of the man ...he is human. It is a very dynamic and at the same time charming painting.

At that time I was making a tour of American cities, seeing museums that I had always wanted to see but had never seen and over the course of three months I was happy to find in many museums some really fine Hartley works.

In Portland , Oregon I first encountered the Maine paintings; After the Hurricane, (Plate 83). And in Tucson three lovely Hartley’s both from Maine and from his time in Aix en Provence.

In Kansas City, I was delighted to find at the Nelson Atkins Museum one of his early German works, a portrait of his German officer friend. And a few blocks down the street at the Kemperer Museum one of his late Maine paintings. It was wonderful to see works almost side by side in which a person who had begun his career with the exuberance of discovering his medium could conclude it with some of the most poetic, lyrical, paintings.

Following that trip I began to buy books, exhibition catalogs, biographies for my Hartley studies.

It is especially in the late Maine landscape paintings that I sense a poetic expression. I sensed a real similarity in his work to that of Eugene O’Neill, both being poets of tremendous compassion and feeling. In almost all of them we see a foreground cluttered with obstacles ...rocks or logs spilled without order ...beyond that a body of water, beyond that a line of standing trees, a forest, and beyond that often a dark brooding mountain. It is almost a literal statement that the way forward is strewn with obstacles, that there are barriers, and that there is a forbidding task confronting a formidable object. However, in all of them there is in one corner or the other a square or rectangle or a wavy line across the top of light blue. That light blue seems to promise air, destination and escape.

From the biographies we know that Hartley had a deep longing for spiritual peace. He had been exposed to Christianity as a child but was not believed to be overly religious. In the paintings the longing is always present but it is never fulfilled. In many of his figurative works the individual is always alone, or separate from the others, or, if a group or a family, alone as a social unit. There are no Bruegel village dances in Hartley’s world, no Kermis at Hoboken.

I question whether this was a search for a spiritual life, a search for meaning...purpose, or whether he acknowledged that it was only a universal longing for same, or an ignorance of the longing as seen in some of his men on the beach preoccupied as they are with earthly things if not just themselves. In his Mellon Lectures Phillip Golding reviews the work of six modern artists and tells us about their religious antecedents and how they followed what he called The Paths to The Absolute. I thought most of us recognized that the only absolute is that there is no absolute. Camus has informed us that we have evolved in an absurd universe. There is no reason for it to be here: there is no reason for us to be here. It does not care if we are here. It was here long before our arrival and it will continue being what it is long after our departure. From others we know that eventually the sun ill exhaust its fuel and burn out and that when it does it will flare out and incinerate the entire solar system. There will be no evidence that we were ever here at all. The universe still will not care. Camus further informs us that suicide is not the answer ...living is the answer, our task being to find, as William James would have it: what makes a life significant.

Looking at these landscapes I see and feel this. And in company with his Maine men I understand that we are indeed alone. But however alone we have the very slightest experience of fellowship ...we stand on the promontory together. And we sense this through art. Art is a call to community. It is there that we feel the other. Suzanne Langer wrote that in every society man has left evidence of a need for symbolic experience and that desire has manifest itself through magic and ritual, religion and art. We seek symbolic experience not spiritual attainment and it seems to me that is what Hartley has wrought. I think it has been the understanding of that call to community that led the truly great modern artists to continue to work in representational styles, abstraction being a call to only the art world initiates.

I see this in the figurative drawings much more so than their being merely a display of homo eroticism on the beach. Granted they are erotic, but they are more than either of these things as well: the catalog notes the pink shirt worn by the standing figure in Plate 87, Lobster Fishermen, suggesting that it is an example of homosexual coding. (Actually it is a red shirt with white (pink) highlighting.) But it fails to note that two of the other men are in shirts that are the red of raw meat, that the flesh of all the men looks as if it had just had blood rinsed from it; they have the stained hands of hunters and fishermen after they have dressed their kill. The whole of the painted group exudes rawness, blood, manual labor ...earth bound creatures ganged together against the sea and the sky. Separate from it. In Hartley I believe the sky is always important. I believe it is a personal symbol. It occurs from his first works to his last. Surprisingly, however, when he lets the blue dominate, as in The Church at Head Tide, Plate 149 or Birds of the Bagaduce, Plate 57, we can see very clearly that blue, as a subject, is not his color: he is a master of the earth tones: he is an artist not of the light but of the shadows.

Hartley’s career was off to a good start with the early neo impressionist painting he made of the Maine mountains, his modernist German Officer painting made in Munich, and some really good cubist work he did the summer of 1916 in Provincetown. But he fell into a mid career slump. Not much of his work of the middle period interested the public. Many in the art world thought that he had exhausted his stay. The late career Maine paintings revived interest in his work but it was the figurative paintings shown in New York in 1940 where the public and the art world acknowledged that at last he had arrived. There is a wonderful selection of those figurative works here. I am sorry however that they did not include the paintings that he made in Nova Scotia. Of his eight final years in Maine two of them were spent in Nova Scotia and include the beautiful Mason family series. (Years prior to this exhibition here had been another small exhibition: Marsden Hartley and Nova Scotia.)

Oddly I don’t feel, as I would in the work of Winslow Homer, that Hartley’s seascapes continue this philosophical/poetic strain. To me they read rather as his attempt to align himself on the side of history as a latter day modernist Winslow Homer. They are good paintings. They are in your face and the impasto very visceral, a quality that is missing in Homer, where the brush work is invisible and the subtext is completely dominant: they are a picture of something.

In fact in all of the Maine paintings I believe Hartley was attempting to place himself on the time line of western painting by consciously creating museum painting. He had always had as his foremost influence the life and work of Cezanne and much of Cezanne’s late work was exactly this effort to create “museum” paintings. That explains the late portraits, The Card Players, and the bathers...tho monumental nudes.

How the Cezanne influence, that for so long seemed to threaten his career, paid off can be seen in the Mount Katahdin series. These too are among the best of his work, and although inspired by Cezanne’s Mont Sant Victoire series, they are all Hartley. I first came upon them in the National Gallery. I was not surprised that it was in the West Building, with the old masters, rather than in the East ...the Moderns.

One curious group of paintings here is Hartley’s sea side objects: shell, rocks, ropes, and ...the lobster. I have seen the lobster at the Smithsonian in the Luce Conservation Center hanging on a wall with a great many other paintings. It looked small and insignificant. Here, where it has been given prominence, it assumes a greater validity. But it is red, the color of a cooked lobster and not the earthy tones of a lobster who lives, camouflaged, on the ocean floor. What are we to make of this? Was he hungry? Was he penniless and fantasizing about food ...food so near yet so far away?

And next to it the Black Duck No. 2. Plate 53. When I first saw it I was struck by its similarity to Sargent’s “Madam X.” And as I stood looking at it two very elderly ladies crossed in front of me, leaned in to see it more closely and then stepped back with one commenting dismissively: “Huh! Madam X.” (Madam X has been in the collection of The Met since 1909. Surely he would have seen it there.) Whereas Madam looks to her left the bird looks to its right. But they are otherwise almost identical in composition, color and mood. And what are we to make of this! I began to wonder if it might not be a satirical comment on Sargent’s work. I have always felt that Sargent is famous beyond his achievement. He lived in the time of Manet, Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, et al, and yet he was the master of the academic tradition being in great demand as a society portrait artist. One should not hesitate to call him decadent. A confirmed modernist I can well image how horrified Hartley might have been by his work. And as Sargent’s work is so well represented in Boston, at the Museum of Fine Art, The Isabella Gardner Museum, and the murals in the Boston Public library Hartley would have had more than enough examples on how never to paint ...or to live one’s life.

But what do we make of this? Is it satirical? Was it meant to elicit a laugh? Did Hartley in fact have a sense of humor that we might not be reading in the others of his work? Is it camp? Or, if we are unfamiliar with Sargent’s work, was it intended to be the somber work that it can also be? Is it another modernist reworking of an American genre; a Peto or Harnett still life with dead fish and fowls?

What I miss in the exhibition is an example of Hartley’s flower paintings. He painted many of them, as well as garden tools. The last painting on his easel when he died was a bouquet of roses. Here it is all land and sea and men of the sea.

Since becoming familiar with Hartley’s work I have been perplexed as to why he is not more well known than he is. He is the Harry Callahan of modern art.

In a 1969 article devoted to Hartley and his work Hilton Kramer wrote: “The career of Marsden Hartley is one of the most interesting in the history of modern painting in America, but the very reasons that make it interesting have also made it difficult at times to keep his accomplishments clearly in focus.” He was referring to the shows that, like this one, focused on one aspect of his career. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser in the catalog preface to a 1980 Hartley exhibit that toured several American museums continued: “The smaller, focused shows made an important contribution on a single segment of Hartley’s oeuvre and helped to keep the accomplishments in focus. But they prevented the public from understanding the breadth and depth of Hartley's career as a whole”.

Obviously the exhibitions that have kept his name before the public and the art world makers and shakers have failed to create for him an iconic stature. And that was no doubt because of his working in a number of styles which resulted in his not having created an iconic personal style that summons his name. My personal choice is to see the work of an artist who has grown and broadened his achievement by working across a broad spectum of styles as Hartley did (and as Mondrian did), or in allowing his chosen style to expand and deepen though experience (as in Cezanne.).

Perhaps it is because the Hartley exhibits have played in the smaller and more regional museums, not in the homes of the blockbuster big leaguers that he has been made to seem “less important” and therefore negligible when he is known. This wonderful exhibition at the Met could have remedied the problem. Unfortunately, there were not twenty people in the galleries when I was there. And I went through the show, went out for coffee and went through it a second time. I had the elevators to myself. I had the galleries to myself. (Which is how I prefer it.) Friends who have seen this have told me that there were few others there as well. I have a strong sense that the Met has failed to promote their exhibition sufficiently as to make of this a defining moment in Hartley’s career. Had it played at The Met Fifth Avenue with a large banner out front wafting in the breeze, would it have drawn a larger audience?

Perhaps it was the representatives, the gallery owners, who failed to promote their artists into prominence. For twenty five years Hartley’s work was seen at the Stieglitz galleries. He was one of the Stieglitz six: the others being Stieglitz himself, Georgia O’Keefe (Mrs. Stieglitz), John Marin, Arthur Dove, and Paul Strand. And in this case Stieglitz might have been the problem. He was vehemently opposed to the materialism and the crass commercialism of the American culture.

Alfred Stieglitz could be a very difficult person. When visitors to his 291 Gallery would inquire about the price of an art work he would often inform them that it was not a gallery but a museum and that the works were not for sale.

There was always a floating seventh in the Stieglitz circle and quite often that floating seventh was Charles Demuth. One contemporary art historian has suggested that Stieglitz denied him a permanent place because Demuth was overtly homosexual. It was suggested that Alfred might have found this personally unappealing or that he wished to minimize his public association with that artist. Whatever the reason he did show and sell the work.

Marsden Hartley was also overtly homosexual. (I believe though that however obvious he might have been he was not “out” in the present sense.) And he too was treated differently from the others. In his case Stieglitz showed Hartley’s work, he promoted him, he offered him guidance and shepherded his development. But he made little effort to sell his work.

Hartley grew up working class poor in Maine and for a short time in Cleveland. He lived poor almost all of his adult life. he lived from hand to mouth prior to the first meeting with Stieglitz n 1909 and on until they dissolved their agreement around 1935. When he absolutely needed money to eat, to buy materials or to travel, Stieglitz would somehow come up with the cash. This relationship has the character of a mutual dependency: one depends on the other for succor, the other for confirmation of his role as savior. And so perhaps Stieglitz’s different treatments of Demuth and Hartley were just two more of his many games, as well as another indication of his pleasure in being difficult. But there is also the suggestion in both cases, if sexuality was an issue, that the artists were being punished...a darker interpretation that is best left to others to analyze.

In any event Stieglitz was not a D.H. Kahnweiler who took a chance on Picasso’s and Braque’s explorations that resulted in cubism...and through careful exploitation made them and himself famous...and rich. Nor was he a Leo Castelli who took a handful of artists in the 1960’s and ballyhooed them into prominent collections and museums. In Castelli’s era the high cost of the art work he sold validated the artist’s talent. Stieglitz would have been horrified.

But however extreme his circumstances Hartley never considered doing anything other than painting. It would seem that he had a sound understanding of his talent and that he had an absolute confidence in his eventual success. It is fortunate that other artists recognized his talent and commitment and welcomed him into the art circles he sought out wherever he traveled ...and into the social sets surrounding them as well. (The number of contemporary artists Hartley knew personally during his lifetime is remarkable.) While he was a “loner” he was never an outsider. (And I would think that he was a loner in the same sense that Cezanne was a loner.) And it is significant that in the archival material on Hartley’s social interactions with his friends and fellow artists there is little if any suggestion that he was a hanger on, a beggar, or a whining malcontent. (He was noted, however, for being cheap. This is often the case when one has no money.) He wanted to paint, to paint well. He studied, he worked hard, and despite the difficulties he painted...very, very well. His friendships apparently stimulated and sustained him.

The earliest work in this exhibition (1907) Shady Brook, Plate22, is a landscape which he gave to the Lewiston Public Library. Unlike works created by amateurs in art classes in small American towns...where the painting is simply “a picture” of something and the colors timidly brushed on with no awareness of the history or the tradition or the craft of fine art painting, Hartley’s work makes use of a motif in order to make a painting, a painting which shows an academic training, a growing mastery of the craft of painting, an understanding of color theory, a mastery of balancing tonal values, and with the daring and the ability to express his deeply felt feelings for the human experience. Hartley had a fine analytical vision and was by aptitude and temperament a natural painter. He painted this at the age of thirty. He had been studying painting in Lewiston, Cleveland, Boston, and New York, for ten years, After showing his early work to Stieglitz he was immediately accepted into his circle.

The 291 Gallery began as a pictorialist photography gallery but as time went on Stieglitz became aware of the new modern art being created in Europe, and he began to encourage artists to create an American art. It can be assumed that Emerson’s The American Scholar was an influence for him as it had been for Hartley. (His later gallery was named An American Place.) Once the Stieglitz six were established it would be seen that there was a common thread in their work: it was representational, figurative (in the way that Picasso and Matisse were representational), the color was local color, there was an awareness of European Modernism in that it had a sense of abstracting the essence of the motif without being too abstract (ambiguous or arbitrary). And it had American subjects ...persons, places, and things.

Despite the inspiration from Emerson, despite the ambitions of Mr. Stieglitz, and despite his own focus on a specific place, in this instance Maine, Hartley’s paintings are not just about making an American art: they are a concerted attempt from first to last to create a place for himself in the cannon of Western Art, to be a museum painter. His Maine is the Provence of Cezanne. (Hartley spent two years in Provence, 1925-1926, repainting many of Cezanne's motifs. It was that series of paintings that lead to his break with Stieglitz.) He was no less solitary than Cezanne and he was as well no less ambitious to achieve the highest goals. During his lifetime Hartley explored Nineteenth century French landscape, Connecticut Impressionism, and German modernism. He explored American folk art and seems almost to have modeled his itinerant lifestyle on the early American sign painters who were often called upon in their travels to do portraits and family groups. From his Paris visit in 1914 his strongest and most lasting influence was Cezanne. He also, like almost every other early twentieth century painter explored cubism. Intellectually and technically he firmly positioned himself in the cannon of modern art. But the personal style he evolved in the Maine paintings came about because he reverted to another very early influence: Albert Pinkham Ryder.

Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946. Just a few years later abstract expressionism was launched on its turn around the art world circus and the Stieglitz six, and the various sevens, seemed to fall into disfavor. Following the expressionists came the pop artists and the art world circus around them. The good, strong, solid painting of the Stieglitz circle faded to a lesser position, eclipsed, as they say, by history. As an artist of representational and figurative work, Hartley was passe. Now that the mid century art world smoke has lifted and the mirrors obscured with the grime of time, perhaps there will be a renaissance of these works still worthy of our attention.

And of course there is the man himself who might be the cause of his repute.

The fact that Hartley was an art world effete, an effeminate, rather foppish dandy, a sissy, (judging from the photographs) probably limited the interest that the general public might have had, if they had known anything about him at all. But it would be enough in these United States for a public to dislike someone about whom they had only “heard something”.

Before and between two world wars he was known as a very pro German enthusiast. His first trip to Europe was to Germany, just as the young Picasso had hoped to make but did not because he could only afford to go as far as Paris. Seeing sophisticated Europe for the first time in 1911, this poorly educated country boy from Maine was bedazzled by the pomp and ceremony of militaristic Germany. Going back in the early 1930, he marveled at their recovery and thought that much of the credit should go to Hitler. And he went so far as to state that he thought the Jewish solution, the ghettos, was probably for the best. All of this I believe speaks to his political naivete: in none of his other letters or notes does he make any mention of politics or government at all. As a friend of Leo and Gertrude Stein, and a frequent guest in their Rue de Fleuris apartment, I think they might have shown him the door had they suspected him of being an anti Semite.

From what I can make out in the biographies Hartley was naive, an innocent, and if his career did not soar to great heights as per his wishes, I suspect he hadn’t a clue about how to make it do so. Knowing “someone”, important people, is about as much as he understood. And if he was indeed “co-dependent” on Stieglitz, you can see he would not have gone too far.

It is always an effort well rewarded to see an exhibition of Hartley’s work, whether a career retrospective or a focused part. He is the great lyric poet of American painting and, quite simply the greatest American painter of the twentieth century. Yes, Pollack made a breakthrough with his drip paintings. But after having made a few for collectors and museums, he had nowhere else to go. Except for three paintings his earlier work is not all that interesting. His is the interesting career. He is historically important but he is not great. Hartley will outlive him. Perhaps it is the evidence of these various styles that make Hartley’s work confusing to the general public: they simply can’t get a handle on it without investing a lot of time and study, Unfortunately American audiences are not likely to do that.

I was sorry that this exhibition was placed at the Met Breuer. While it has a lovely sculptural presence on the exterior the interior is hostile, dark, and unpleasant. It feels like nothing so much as one of those dreary discount department stores that popped up on Fifth Avenue in the sixties. I am all in favor of museums decentralizing. I see no reason for everything having to be under one roof, or for unused space being converted to galleries. With so many expansions the Met Fifth Avenue is now nothing but a series of corridors creating distraction and confusion in what are still called galleries.

And of course wherever it is it should all be free to the public both domestic and foreign. The museum was intended as a gift to the people, gift meaning free to the public. It was a token of gratitude from the robber barons who profited greatly from government largess, corporate welfare. Now the Met itself has become the face of corporate greed and demands that we pay and pay and keep on paying. Enough I say. You are handsomely funded. Tighten your belt. Learn to live within your means.

Hartley’s Materials.
American museums are often described as teaching institutions and I have become very appreciative of the inclusion in exhibition catalogs chapters on the artist and his materials. The chapter in this catalog is very good indeed. But rather than telling us why Hartley used the materials he did there is too much respectful suggestion that it might have been for this or that reasons.

Although Picasso often painted on what has been described as “cardboard” ...as well as paper napkins ...most paintings are described as “oil on canvas”. In the catalog Marsden Hartley’s work is stated as being oil on canvas, academy board, or hardboard, meaning masonite. It does not specify if the canvas was linen, or if that is implied in art world parlance, or if it was cotton. Art supply catalogs offer a wide range and variety of cotton canvas. They offer linen as well. Cotton, despite its ability to expand and shrink with the changing humidity, and thereby cause crackling, seems to be the norm. At least in mail order/internet purchases. It also has a tendency to rot from the back unless treated with formaldihyde. Linen is the professionally preferred material and in the last works of Picasso where he left so much unpainted surface the character of the beautifully primed but unpainted linen adds an elegance to the whole. Hartlety was familiar with linen from his time in Europe and is on record as thinking the American equivalent was greatly inferior. Let’s hope that in the future curators will make the distinction.

It was and still is possible to buy canvas by the yard as well as the stretchers necessary to make the support. The artist either takes the time to stretch and prime the material or he has studio assistants who do that for him. Although it takes time away from painting it is not difficult to stretch, size and prime a canvas. I learned to to it well when I was just eighteen. Somewhat trained in the academic tradition I suspect Hartley also knew how to do it. (For our better understanding of his choices he curator’s should have told us what was the practice of the other Maine or Provincetown painters.) It is also possible at more professional shops to have a specific fabric stretched and primed and delivered to the studio.

If Hartley was concerned about convenience I would think that he was best served by traveling with a roll of canvas and a bundle of stretchers. Once at his destination he could devote a few hours of a few days to getting things ready for his work. If he did not stretch his own canvas and if he did not want to train the locals to do it for him he could use the ready mades. One advantage of canvas is that once the painting is dry it can be removed from the stretchers and rolled up and shipped to a dealer or a friend. Van Gogh did this while in Arles. Picasso’s Guernica has been shipped rolled so many times I have read that the surface has been seriously damaged.

As I understand it from various catalogs, Hartley sent the Maine paintings to the Hudson Walker Gallery in New York. A rolled canvas would have been much easier to ship than the other two materials. Although Hartley designed and had frames made for him and shipped up from New York, for an increased percentage the Gallery also ordered and paid for the framing.

I think one means to determine his preference would be to compare the paintings made in Europe with those made here: i.e. was there a consistent use of linen in Europe, were there any academy board painting made there, etc. (As far as I know ‘yes’ on both counts.) Did he ship all of those paintings home flat or rolled?

A latter day version of Academy Board is still available through Dick Blick Art Supplies, but it is not that cheap. In fact it is a little more than a stretched cotton canvass of the same size. And it now comes in various materials and weights including Linen. Academy board was made for student work available through catalogs for schools but was also available in many small American towns where the local paint store often had a small department of artists supplies. All of them rather cheap. As recently as 1985 art supplies were still sold at the Benjamin Moore Paint Store in Scranton Pennsylvania, since gone out of business. Hartley’s paintings on academy board appear to have held up well. The first two surviving paintings I ever made, in the 1950’s, were on academy board and still look much as they did when I made them.

I can also see in my work that they were not varnished which was a finish I did not learn about until some years after I had begun painting. Varnish gives a painting that glistening, wet-look, rich oleo- resinous character that was one of the reasons I fell in love with painting. However when Picasso and Braque made their explorations in what became known as cubism, they decided not to varnish. And if you see a varnished analytical cubist work you can see that it makes the work look airless, hermetically sealed and lifeless. The same occurs when a painting is glazed: under glass. Thus the decision to varnish is up to the artist according to the character of the individual work. Hartley was in Paris after 1914, he knew the Steins, likely Picasso, and so he would have seen this unvarnished work ...perhaps as the authority in residence Leo Stein might have pointed it out to him.

Hartley’s Maine paintings appear not to be varnished ...he was after that primitive untrained quality ...although the catalog points out that he did varnish in places ...perhaps certain colors: black and raw umber have a tendency to “sink in”. The varnish would keep them in their place and on the surface with the other colors.

Academy board would have been easier to transport on his endless travels than masonite. One catalog states that he used quarter inch masonite. That can be rather heavy. I had a four by eight foot sheet cut into 12 by 18 inch rectangles and it was all I could do to pick up the box in which they were delivered to me; I would not want to travel with a suitcase full of it.

In his book The Artist and His Materials Ralph Mayer lists masonite as an acceptable painting ground. It would likely be available in any town with a lumber yard. He warns that in sizes over 18 by 24 inches it needs to be cradled: supports glued to the back to prevent buckling and warping. Masonite with do that if it gets wet or is in a too damp environment. (As will academy board.) He also suggests that it has to be primed with gesso four or five times with a thorough sanding between coats until a flawless white finish is achieved, just as one would do when painting a decorative finish on furniture. Masonite, made of wood pulp, is very acid and without the priming there is the possibility that the ground will destroy the painted finish. Its color will also bleed onto neighboring surfaces if it is not primed and if it gets wet.

Marsden Hartley primed his masonite panels with shellac according to the catalog. I suppose that is okay. The paintings are almost one hundred years old and appear to be still holding up,. By using shellac he was able to use the warm brown color of the material as an under paint, a tinted ground, a technique he had been using since his earliest works made in Cleveland. And he was also able to use less paint ...paints are very expensive. Because the masonite surface is so smooth it lacks the necessary tooth of the canvas or academy board for his usual thick application of paint. In fact in all of the works done on those two surfaces he has lost the texture of the ground completely. On masonite his paints are thinly applied, perhaps much diluted with turpentine, and brushed out it would seem with sable brushes. Some of those paintings have the character of a shimmering mirage.

The catalog also states that bristles from his cheap brushes can be found in the finished work on canvas and academy board.. Hartley did a lot of scrumbling as a last touch on many of the Maine paintings. You need a cheap brush for that: a good brush will hold its shape through thick or thin and they are almost impossible to use for scrumbling ...a cheap brush does the job best. As an unreliable marking device it gives you a spontaneous design-by-accident finish.

When I was being trained as a set designer the instructor insisted that we always use the best materials for our renderings and presentations. He reasoned that having spent the money we would bestir ourselves to do our best work. Likely Hartley heard this as well. In these Maine paintings however he seems not to have used the best material for a specific reason: he wanted that hand made primitive, folk art finish. It emphasized that he was an “outsider” artist, a la his mentor Ryder. And at this late stage in his life, he was no longer poor. The Hudson Walker and the Macbeth Galleries sold his paintings well. At his death he had a bank account with fifteen thousand dollars in it. As it regards his choice of materials; with his training, his experience, his friends, and having the means, I suspect he knew what he was doing. He made what he considered the right choices for the work at hand.


https://www.colby.edu/museum/exhibition/view/upcoming/