Flowers

Provenance

The estate of the artist

Knoedler and Co., New York, New York

Oliver M. Brooks

Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, New York, December 5, 1991, lot 100

Vance Jordan Fine Art, New York, New York

Leah and Richard Waitzer, Virginia

Alexandre Gallery, New York, New York

Private collection, New York, New York

Exhibited

Lee Ault & Co., New York, New York, ca. 1970s

Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Proud Possessions: A Community Collects, May 29–July 19, 1992

Vance Jordan Fine Art, New York, New York, Power and Whimsy: A Private Collection of American Modernism, April 28–June 5, 2003

Literature

Proud Possessions: A Community Collects (Norfolk, VA: Chrysler Museum of Art, 1992), 49.

Andrea Dale Smith, Kendall Scully, and Carol Irish, Power and Whimsy: A Private Collection of American Modernism (New York: Vance Jordan Fine Art, 2003), 32, 84, 85, plate 21.

Jerry Saltz, Seeing out Loud: The Village Voice Art Columns, Fall 1998-Winter 2003 (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003), 26.

Related Works

White Flower, ca. 1917, oil on paperboard, 16⅛ × 12 ⅛  inches, signed lower left: M.H.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Summer Clouds and Flowers, 1942, oil on fabricated board, 22 x 28 inches; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York

Note

Marsden Hartley approached still life with the same expertise and zeal that defined his vivid landscapes. “It seems as if I should never want to do more than still life again,” he wrote to his dealer Alfred Stieglitz in 1911. The genre continued to challenge him throughout his career. Similar to his work overall, Hartley’s still lifes underwent frequent shifts in style and approach, shaped by Hartley’s continual relocations, intellectual engagements, and emotional fluctuations. His early work shows the influence of Matisse, Picasso, and particularly Cézanne.[1] In reference to Hartley’s series of flower still lifes, curator and writer Barbara Haskell asserted these “jewel-like” works are “more lush and delicate than anything he had ever painted.”[2]

[1] Grace Glueck, “Art in Review; ‘The Heart of the Matter’—The Still Lifes of Marsden Hartley,’” New York Times, May 30, 2003.

[2] Barbara Haskell, Marsden Hartley (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980), 78.