Marsden Hartley : “Lobster Fishermen” (1940-1941)

Art critic Roberta Smith describes Marsden Hartley as “America’s first great modern painter of the 20th century.” His style is a synthesis of Cubism and German Expressionism that reflects a wide variety of European and American influences. As a young artist studying in New York City he admired the eccentric proto-modernist Albert Pinkham Ryder and the writings of the transcendentalists, Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau. In 1912 he traveled to Paris and joined Gertude Stein’s circle, where he met Picasso. Then, from 1913-1916, he lived in Berlin, befriending Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. When it became apparent that America would enter World War I, he toured the United States before residing once again in Europe, this time from 1921-1930.

His travels finally ended in 1937, when he settled in his native state of Maine. Now in his 60s, he rediscovered American life at the local level and declared his intention to become “the painter of Maine.” The setting for Lobster Fishermen is the coastal town of Corea, where Hartley had taken up residence in 1940. “Aware of Maine’s reputation as a natural oasis from city life and responsive to the popularity of folk art,” observes the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Hartley adopted a self-consciously ‘primitive’ style…Here, he painted men gathered on a wharf with their lobster traps, a scene that conveys the profound integration of man and nature.”