Mount Katahdin, Autumn, No. 2

Marsden Hartley

1939–40 · Oil on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

Beginning in the mid-1930s, Hartley, a restless artist who had previously been associated with the European avant-garde, proclaimed himself to be the "Painter from Maine." Between 1939 and 1942, he created more than eighteen bold paintings of Maine’s highest peak, Mount Katahdin, a geological landmark that, as the northernmost terminus of the Appalachian Trail, resonated with both regional and national symbolism. Hartley’s flat and rough-hewn depiction of form aligns his work with folk art, which audiences and critics embraced throughout the period as inherently American.

Artist

Marsden Hartley

Date

1939–40

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection, Bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal, 1991