[Maine Coastal Scene with Sailboats, Rocks, Lighthouse and Clouds in Sky]
ca. 1938-1943
Marsden Hartley,
American,
(Lewiston, ME, January 4, 1877 - September 2, 1943, Ellsworth, ME)
Notes
Here again, Hartley frames the scene in a much smaller area than the full piece of the paper—almost as if this, like the previous drawing (MHMC 1955.1.92) is a view through a square window. In this case, however, the seascape elements—sailboats, rocks, lighthouse, and clouds—are tightly and abstractly compressed spatially, something like a cubist painting. There seems barely room for the central sailboat, tilted upward as it heaves jauntily through the water, to maneuver between the rock cliffs left and right. Heavy crosshatch lines give equal density to clouds and solid objects like the hull of the boat or the indecipherable area at the upper left edge.