Songs of Winter, No. 3

Details

MARSDEN HARTLEY (1877-1943)
Songs of Winter, No. 3
signed 'Marsden Hartley' (lower left)—signed again and inscribed '#3- Songs of Winter' (on the reverse)
oil on board
9 x 12 in. (22.8 x 30.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1907-08.

Provenance

The artist.
Anderson Galleries, New York, 17 May 1921, lot 14, sold by the above (as An Impression, Maine).
E. Weyhe Gallery, New York, acquired from the above.
Elie Nadelman, New York.
Estate of the above.
Nielson Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts.
Harold Story, New York.
Babcock Galleries, New York, acquired from the above, circa 2001.
Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York, 2005.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2005.

Literature

Archives of American Art, Elizabeth McCausland Files.
G. Scott, Marsden Hartley, New York, 1988, p. 19, fig. 10, illustrated.

Exhibited

(Probably) New York, Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, Exhibition of Paintings in Oil by Mr. Marsden Hartley, of Maine, May 8-18, 1909.
New York, Anderson Galleries, Seventy-Five Pictures by James M. Rosenberg and 117 Pictures by Marsden Hartley, May 10-17, 1921, no. 14 (as An Impression, Maine).
New York, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Inc., Marsden Hartley: Paintings and Drawings, March 6-April 27, 1985, n.p., no. 44, illustrated.
New York, Babcock Galleries, John Frederick Kensett, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, May 16-June 11, 2001, pp. 34-35, illustrated.
New York, Spanierman Gallery, LLC, Maine: A Legacy in Painting, 1830 to the Present, October 11-November 9, 2005, p. 55, no. 38, illustrated (as Song of Winter [Landscape #3]).

Further Details

This painting is included in The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project: Complete Paintings and Works on Paper, with Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine. We are grateful for Gail R. Scott’s assistance with the cataloguing of this work.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The present work is part of Marsden Hartley's Songs of Winter series of small-scale oils painted in Maine during the winter of 1907-08. There are six other know works from the series, including Song of Winter No. 6 in the collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland Maine and Songs of Winter in the collection of the University of Minnesota Art Gallery in Minneapolis.

Elizabeth Finch writes “The grouping of seasonal themes into ‘songs’ signaled their association with Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself.’…This coding of self in terms of nature (and Whitman) reverberates in the paint facture. Shades of blue tinged with pink predominate in the Songs of Winter series, and the subtle variation of loosely applied paint denotes both subject matter and the suggestion of distance or proximity.” (“Becoming ‘An American Individualist’: The Early Work of Marsden Hartley,” Marsden Hartley’s Maine, New York, 2017, p. 57)

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