[Seacoast with Sand Beach, Rocks, and Trees]
ca. 1936-1943
Marsden Hartley,
American,
(Lewiston, ME, January 4, 1877 - September 2, 1943, Ellsworth, ME)
Notes
Execution of the line of trees in the background done with sharp sidewise strokes of a broad pencil, dense cross-hatching in a few of the trees at center, and a single outline stroke giving accent to the tree in the center of the line. Use of dots for sand on beach, with both soft and hard pressure and single line, heavy pressure to articulate rocks and selvages of the water.
This drawing is one of a series of four (1955.1.25, 26, 27) that were originally thought to have been coastal New Hampshire scenes from 1930, but that summer and fall Hartley was inland, painting mountains and river subjects around Franconia, Lost Beaver Lake and Little River regions, and there is no evidence that Hartley he time on the coast. Rather, the locales and style of these drawings resemble the North Atlantic coastal scenes he drew and painted later in Nova Scotia and Maine between 1936-43. These four are now grouped with others in the MHMC from those years (1955.1.88, 89, 90, 91).