Still Life No. 15

Marsden HartleyWW-1917-131511

1917·Oil on composition board·59.4 × 49.5 cm (23 3/8 × 19 1/2 in.)

<p>Marsden Hartley turned to still-life painting throughout his career, restlessly using the genre as a means of aesthetic experimentation as he worked out new ideas, styles, and motifs. During the 1910s, influenced by the works of Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso, he produced numerous compositions, including <em>Still Life No. 15</em>, a spare arrangement of a white goblet holding a lone pink flower against a backdrop of cream and blue fabric. Unlike many works by Hartley from this period, which emphasize the two-dimensionality of his canvases, here he conveyed a sense of the shallow dark space behind the arrangement on its skewed tabletop. Using a dry, brushy style, Hartley suggested the volumetric presence of the objects through the shading that accentuates the form of the goblet and the deep folds of the fabric.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1917
Medium: Oil on composition board
Dimensions: 59.4 × 49.5 cm (23 3/8 × 19 1/2 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Marsden Hartley

Artist

Marsden Hartley

Painting

Recognized as one of the leading artists of American Modernism, painter Marsden Hartley developed a unique style that largely revolved around landscape, strong colors and geometric abstraction. Hartley was born in 1877 in Lewiston, Maine, but when he was eight his mother died and he was sent to live with a relative in the nearby city of Auburn, where he endured a lonesome and unhappy childhood. He rejoined his immediate family in Ohio in 1893, and began studying at the Cleveland School of Art. His work caught the attention of one of the schools trustees, who granted him the financial means to continue his studies in New York City for five years, beginning in 1899; his skill as an artist improved dramatically, and in 1902, while studying at the National Academy of Design, he won the school’s Suydam Silver Medal for still-life drawing.

Lewiston, ME, United States

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