Hartley, (Edmund) Marsden

Hartley, (Edmund) Marsden (1877-1943), American painter, born in Lewiston, Maine. He studied at the Cleveland School of Art and the Chase School and the National Academy of Design in New York. Returning to Maine in 1901, he painted a series of impressionistic landscapes. In 1912 Hartley went to Europe, where he was influenced by the Fauves and Cubists in Paris and especially by the Expressionists of Der Blaue Reiter in Berlin. His abstract, vivid compositions in Painting No. 5 (1914-1915, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), were suggested by German military motifs. Subsequently, in Paris and southern France, he worked in the manner of Paul Cézanne. Settling in Maine in the 1930s, Hartley evolved a highly personal style. Mountains, rocks, and fishermen filled his harshly coloured, boldly outlined landscapes, seascapes, and genre scenes. Examples are Lobster Fishermen (1941, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Evening Storm, Schoodic, Maine (1942, Museum of Modern Art, New York).