Cemetery, New Mexico (Marsden Hartley)

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Cemetery, New Mexico
Cemetery, New Mexico MET DP236118.jpg
Artist Marsden Hartley
Year1924
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions80.3 cm× 99.7 cm(31.6 in× 39.3 in)
Location Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Cemetery, New Mexico is an early 20th century painting by American artist Marsden Hartley. Done in oil on canvas, the painting depicts a cemetery in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. The work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Contents

Description

History

In 1918–1919, Marsden Hartley and a group of artists visited the American Southwest. [1] One destination on this trip was the state of New Mexico, specifically the town of Taos, the nearby Taos Pueblo Reservation (which housed a resident group of artists known as the Taos art colony) and Santa Fe. Hartley and his fellow travelers lived in the art colony for 18 months. [1] During this period of habitation, Hartley made a mental note of the area's topography, sky, and a small cemetery nearby. However, he was unable to render the scene into a painting at the time. [2]

While visiting Europe (in a trip from 1923 to 1924), Hartley began painting a series of works he called "recollections". [2] The works Hartley produced in this series were painted from memory, with one such work being Cemetery, New Mexico, a Modernist painting depicting a small cemetery in Taos Pueblo. As noted in the Met's profile of Cemetery, Hartley painted from memory to emulate American artist Albert Pinkham Ryder, who the former admired. [2]

Painting

Cemetery itself depicts a cemetery set before a mountain in Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. [2] As noted in the Met's profile of Cemetery, the work exhibits signs of being painted in an exaggerated, abstract, lazy-like way, likely a result of being painted from Hartley's memory. [2]

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References

  1. 1 2 Hole, Heather; Museum, Georgia O'Keeffe (2007). Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for an American Modernism. Yale University Press. ISBN   9780300121490.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Cemetery, New Mexico". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-07-26.