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Military

1914-1915

Marsden Hartley

(American, 1877-1943)

America, 20th century

Oil on canvas

Framed: 73.5 x 63.5 x 3.5 cm (28 15/16 x 25 x 1 3/8 in.); Unframed: 60.6 x 50.2 cm (23 7/8 x 19 3/4 in.)

Gift of Professor Nelson Goodman 1981.83

Location

226A American Modern

Did you know?

Hartley was one of the first modern artists to paint abstractions.

Description

This abstract portrait is a memorial tribute to a German lieutenant named Karl von Freyburg with whom Hartley had been in love. The artist described von Freyburg’s death as an "unendurable agony," and created a series of deeply personal paintings in response. Here the shapes and color patterns suggest flags, banners, targets, epaulets, and other military paraphernalia.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed on reverse of fabric: Marsden Hartley

Provenance

1981-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Probably 1956-1981

Professor Nelson Goodman [1906-1998], Cambridge, MA, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art ¹

1935-probably 1956

Robert Locher [1888-1956], Lancaster, PA, sold to Nelson Goodman ²

After 1921-1935

Charles Demuth [1883-1935], Lancaster, PA, by descent to Robert Locher ³

1921-

Albert C. Barnes [1872-1951], Philadelphia, PA ⁴

1921

(Hartley sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, May 10, 1921, as “Pre-War Pageant, 1913," sold to Albert C. Barnes) ⁵

1914/1915-1921

Collection of the artist

Provenance Footnotes

¹Goodman purchased the painting directly from Charles Demuth's heir, Robert Locher, and his partner, Richard Weyand.

²Locher, Demuth's longtime companion, was the principal beneficiary of his estate. According to Nelson Goodman, the painting had been hanging in the Demuth house in Lancaster, PA, where Locher had resided with his partner, Richard Weyand, since Demuth’s death in 1935. Goodman indicates that he purchased the painting from Demuth's "heirs," Locher and Weyand; however, only Locher was Demuth's heir. It is possible that Weyand should also be included in this provenance: if Goodman bought the painting in 1956 after Locher's death but before Weyand's several months later, than Weyand would have been the owner at the time of the purchase.

³At some point, Charles Demuth, Hartley's close friend, obtained the painting. While Demuth knew Barnes well and often visited him, the exact circumstances surrounding the former's acquisition of the painting are unknown.

⁴Barnes purchased this painting, along with three others, at the sale of Hartley's collection on May 10, 1921. Shortly after the auction, Barnes asked Hartley about the possibility of purchasing two more paintings, which Hartley was offering for $350 each. Barnes offered only $50, and Hartley passed the letter to his dealer, Alfred Stieglitz, who never responded. After the incident, Barnes stopped acquiring works by Hartley and eventually removed Military from his collection.

⁵By the spring of 1921, Hartley had become desperately poor, having failed to attract any real following in the United States, and so he was forced to sell off a large portion of his oeuvre at auction.

Citations

Anderson Galleries, Inc. Seventy-Five Pictures by James N. Rosenburg and 117 Pictures by Marsden Hartley. 1921.

Nelson Goodman, letter to Sherman Lee, Dec. 21, 1981, in CMA curatorial file.

William Robinson, “Marsden Hartley’s Military,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76.1 (Jan. 1989): 2-26.

Mark Cole, email to Victoria Sears Goldman and Louis Adrean, Oct. 18, 2013, in CMA curatorial file.

Demuth Dialogue 3.4 (Spring 1985): 2.

Levin, Gail. "Hidden Symbolism in Marsden Hartley's Military Pictures." Arts Magazine 54, no. 2 (October 1979). Mentioned: p. 58

Haskell, Barbara. Marsden Hartley. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with New York University Press, 1980. Reproduced: p. 45, n. 43

"The Year in Review for 1984." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72 (April 1985) Reproduced: n. 49

Robinson, William H. "Marsden Hartley's Military." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76 (January 1989) Mentioned: p. 2, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; Reproduced: front cover illustration

McDonnell, Patricia. "Indian Fantasy: Marsden Hartley's Myth of Amerika in Expressionist Berlin." North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin XVI (1993) Mentioned: p. 56; Reproduced: p. 58, no. 9

Chong, Alan. European and American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. Reproduced: p. 100

Robertson, Bruce. Marsden Hartley. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1995. Reproduced: p. 63

French Regional & American Museums Exchange. Made in USA: L'art américain, 1908-1947. Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2001. Reproduced: p. 91

McDonnell, Patricia. "'Portrait of Berlin': Marsden Hartley and Urban Modernity in Expressionist Berlin." In Marsden Hartley, edited by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser. New Haven: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2002. Mentioned: p. 40, 51, 54

"L’art Américain débarque." Le Magazine: Arts & Spectacles (January 2002) Reproduced: unpaginated

Voorhies, James Timothy, ed. My Dear Stieglitz: Letters of Marsden Hartley and Alfred Stieglitz, 1912-1915. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. Reproduced: no. 6, unpaginated

McDonnell, Patricia. Painting Berlin Stories: Marsden Hartley, Oscar Bluemner, and the First American Avant-Garde in Expressionist Berlin. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Mentioned: p. 97; Reproduced: p. 98, fig. 10

Litt,Steven. "'Geometry' draws us in, yet theme fails to come full circle." The Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 18, 2006. Reproduced: p. J5

Adams, Henry. Whats American about American Art? A Gallery Tour in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008. Mentioned: p. 123; Reproduced: p. 122

Cash, Sarah "Berlin Abstraction." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945, edited by Sarah Cash. Seattle: Marquand Books, Inc., 2011. Mentioned: p. 211

McDonnell, Patricia, and Michael Plante. Dictated by Life: Marsden Hartley's German Paintings and Robert Indiana's Hartley Elegies. Minneapolis, MN: Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota; New York, NY: Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 1995. Reproduced: pp. 30, 55

Chassey, Eric de. Made in USA: l'art américain, 1908-1943, entre nationalisme et internationalisme. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2001. Reproduced: p. 91

Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006. Mentioned: p. 118, no. 58; Reproduced: pp. 57, 64

Exhibition history

Year in Review for 1984. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 3-May 5, 1985).

Dictated by Life: Marsden Hartley's German Paintings and Robert Indiana's Hartley Elegies. Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN (organizer) (co-organizer) (April 14-June 11, 1995); Terra Museum of American Art (July 1-September 10, 1995); The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL (October 1-December 2, 1995).

Made in U.S.A., l'art américain, 1908-1943, entre nationalisme et internationalisme [FRAME]. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, F-33000 Bordeaux, France (organizer) (October 5-December 31, 2001); Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Rennes, France (January 17-March 31, 2002); Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France (April 10-June 25, 2002).

The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).

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{{cite web|title=Military|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1981.83|author=Marsden Hartley|year=1914-1915|access-date=24 October 2021|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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