Still Life with Fruit

Marsden Hartley painted still lifes throughout his career, drawing comparisons for his diverse compositions to artists as disparate as William Merritt Chase, Henri Matisse, André Derain, and Max Weber. The present work is perhaps most reminiscent of the canonic still lifes of French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne, whose work Hartley studied for much of the 1920s. The dark shadow outlines around the work's forms, the bunched bright white tablecloth flowing over the table's edge, and the various fruits carefully arranged are all testaments to Hartley's regard for and interest in the older artist's work. Gail Scott writes that Hartley "marveled that Cézanne was able to see so much in his native region [of Aix-en-Provence] (a lesson Hartley had yet to learn). Immersed so totally and passionately in his subject--whether a mountain, a tree, or an apple--Cézanne was able (as Hartley saw it) to reach a point of detached contemplation where artistic ego vanishes and the object stands for ultimate reality." (Marsden Hartley, New York, 1988, p. 76)