Marsden Hartley
An American Nature

On View at the Frye Art Museum
February 11 – May 21, 2023
704 Terry Ave, Seattle, WA, 98104

Marsden Hartley’s emotive paintings celebrate the grandeur and nuances of nature as expressions of American culture. Hartley (1877–1943) spent much of his career restlessly traveling around North America and Europe. In 1937, he finally settled in his home state of Maine and, in response to the Depression-era cultural and commercial desire for all things homegrown, declared himself an American Regionalist, “the painter from Maine.”

In some of the works on view, the rugged Maine coast is dotted with signs of industry—tamed by Hartley’s stylized organization of rocks, water, and sky—while other paintings make room for agrarian spaces, like farmhouses or lumberyards, that exist between wilderness and urbanity.  

Marsden Hartley: An American Nature is organized by Georgia Erger, Associate Curator. Generous support is provided by the Frye Foundation and Frye Members.