Mount Katahdin, Maine

1942

Marsden Hartley

Painter, American, 1877 - 1943

Amethyst-purple mountains and clouds against a slightly lighter, lavender-purple sky loom over a strip of land painted as bands of brick red and royal blue in this abstracted, horizontal landscape painting. One tall peak with a flattened top rises in front of a few more lower, rounded peaks to our right. Round clouds, like cotton balls, in the same amethyst-purple of the mountains, float against the lighter purple sky. The sky, clouds, and mountains are painted with areas of mottled purple over a red underlayer, all outlined in lapis blue. The horizon line created by the strip of deep red land comes about halfway up the composition. There is a pair of green trees with triangular canopies at the water’s edge near the center of the red band. A few touches of forest-green nearby suggest more trees or bushes. The red band is streaked vertically with visible brushstrokes in flame, ruby, and burgundy red. Along the bottom edge of the painting, the land curves toward us near the lower left corner, around a field painted with horizontal streaks of cobalt and navy blue with a few thin, white lines to suggest ripples. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner: “M.H. 42.”
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During the late 1930s the aging Marsden Hartley experienced a number of personal and professional reversals that prompted him to return to his native state to reinvent himself as a Maine artist. In September 1937, he settled in Bangor, where he realized a long-standing objective to paint Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain. Katahdin’s unspoiled beauty had attracted such notables as Henry David Thoreau and Frederic Edwin Church, and it was heavily promoted as a tourist destination in Hartley’s lifetime. The artist spent eight days in October 1939 making sketches of Katahdin that formed the basis of the approximately 18 oil paintings of it that he produced over the next three years. Executed in 1942, Mount Katahdin, Maine is one of the last and most successful paintings in the series.

Mount Katahdin, Maine was not intended to be a literal view of the mountain, but rather an evocation of its grandeur that captures a seasonal mood. Hartley exercised artistic license by centering Baxter Peak, the mountain’s highest point, and bringing it closer to the foreground than it really appeared from his vantage point. The reductive composition consists of four horizontal zones: the lake, the foliage, the mountain, and the sky. Hartley’s cloud forms are particularly distinctive. They appear to have the same weight and be made of the same substance as the mountain, and yet, barely escaping Katahdin’s gravitational force, they rise and float free against the sky. Such unusual insights reveal Hartley to be an American visionary painter in the tradition of Albert Pinkham Ryder, an artist he greatly admired.

On View

East Building Ground Level, Gallery 106-C

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on hardboard

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Mrs. Mellon Byers

  • Dimensions

    overall: 76 x 101.9 cm (29 15/16 x 40 1/8 in.)
    framed: 101.6 x 127 x 5.7 cm (40 x 50 x 2 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1970.27.1

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Mount Katahdin, Maine, 1942

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1877-1943]; his estate; (Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, as Katahdin, Autumn Rain); purchased 1951 by Hudson D. [1907-1976] and Ione [1915-1987] Walker, Forest Hills, New York, and Provincetown; gift May 1970 to the American Federation of Arts, New York; (Babcock Galleries, New York); purchased 3 December 1970 by NGA with funds given by Mrs. Constance Mellon Byers.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1943

  • Marsden Hartley, Paul Rosenberg Gallery, New York, 1943, as Ktaadn--Autumn Rain.

1944

  • Marsden Hartley, Paul Rosenberg Gallery, New York, 1944.

1948

  • Paintings by Marsden Hartley, Paul Rosenberg Gallery, New York, 1948, no. 16, as Mt. Katahdin--Autumn Rain.

1951

  • Loan to display with permanent collection, University Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1951-1970 (during ownership by the Walkers, when not on loan to special exhibitions elsewhere).

1952

  • [Exhibition of paintings by Marsden Hartley and ceramics by Frances E. Upham], Tweed Gallery (now Tweed Museum of Art), University of Minnesota, Duluth, 1952, no catalogue.

1955

  • In Memoriam, American Federation of Arts travelling exhibition, 1955-1956.

1957

  • The Painter and the Mountain, University of Nebraska Art Galleries, Lincoln, 1957, unpublished checklist.

1959

  • Photography in the Fine Arts, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 1959, no catalogue.

1966

  • Late Works of Marsden Hartley, American Federation of Arts traveling exhibition, 9 venues, 1966-1967, no. 39.

1968

  • Marsden Hartley: Painter/Poet 1877-1943, University Galleries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Tucson Art Center; University Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin, 1968-1969, no. 49, repro.

1980

  • Marsden Hartley, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth; University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1980-81, no. 99, repro.

1999

  • Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., 1999, no. 200, repro.

2001

  • Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001, no. 157, repro.

2003

  • Marsden Hartley: American Modernist, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 2003-2004, no. 93, repro.

Bibliography

1952

  • McCausland, Elizabeth. Marsden Hartley. Minneapolis, 1952: 57 repro., 72.

1978

  • Olds, David William. "A Study of Marsden Hartley's Mt. Katahdin Series, 1939-1942." M.A. Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 1978: 35, 46, 48-49, fig. 7.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 170, repro.

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 17, 152, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 216, repro. 226.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 574, no. 880, color repro.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 174, repro.

1990

  • Paulson, Ronald. Figure and Abstraction in Contemporary Painting. New Brunswick and London, 1990: repro. 69.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 194, repro.

  • Ludington, Townsend. Marsden Hartley: The Biography of an American Artist. 1st ed. Boston, 1992: repro.

1993

  • Hokin, Jeanne. Pinnacles & Pyramids: The Art of Marsden Hartley. Albuquerque, 1993: cover, 114, color pl. 33.

1995

  • Robertson, Bruce. Marsden Hartley. New York, 1995: 123, color repro.

2000

  • Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001: no. 157.

2007

  • Hole, Heather. Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism. Exh. cat. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe. New Haven and Santa Fe, 2007: 142, pl. 127.

2009

  • Stavitsky, Gail, and Katherine Rothkopf. Cézanne and American Modernism. Exh. cat. Montclair Art Museum; Baltimore Museum of Art; Phoenix Art Museum. Montclair and Baltimore, 2009: 216, fig. 1.

Inscriptions

lower right: M.H. / 42

Wikidata ID

Q20193370

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