Aaron Anderson
Specialist, Head of Sale
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, DELAWARE
Lot 5
Marsden Hartley(1877-1943)Camellias in a Vase 27 x 19 in. (68.6 x 48.3 cm.)
Amended
30 April 2025, 14:00 EDT
New YorkUS$120,000 - US$180,000
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Morgan Martin
Head of Department
Mary Manfredi
Cataloguer & Sale Coordinator
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)
Camellias in a Vase
oil on canvas
27 x 19 in. (68.6 x 48.3 cm.)
Painted in 1917-18.
oil on canvas
27 x 19 in. (68.6 x 48.3 cm.)
Painted in 1917-18.
Footnotes
Provenance
Charles Daniel Gallery, New York.
Duncan Phillips (1886-1966), Washington, D.C., acquired from the above, 1927.
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., from the above.
William Macbeth Gallery, New York, acquired from the above, 1942
(probably) Adelaide Kuntz (1895-1966), Bronxville, New York.
Frances Kuntz Malek, New York, daughter of the above, (probably) by descent from the above, 1966.
M. Knoedler & Co., New York, consigned from the above, 1967.
Frances Kuntz Malek, New York, returned from the above, 1968.
Bernard Danenberg Galleries, Inc., New York. (as Camelias in a Vase)
Senator William Burnett Benton (1900-1973), Connecticut, by 1970.
O'Meara Gallery, Santa Fe.
Private collection, acquired from the above, 2009.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.
Exhibited
Washington, D.C., Phillips Memorial Gallery, Intimate Decorations: Chiefly Paintings of Still Life in New Manners, November 1–29, 1927. (as Camellias)
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Marsden Hartley: A Selection of Paintings and Drawings of the Twenties and Thirties, January 9–27, 1968, no. 13.
New York, Bernard Danenberg Galleries, Inc., Recent Acquisitions: Important American Paintings, Winter 1969, p. 13, no. 24, illustrated.
New York, Bernard Danenberg Galleries, Inc., Marsden Hartley: A Retrospective Exhibition, September 16–October 4, 1969, pp. 6, 17, no. 18, illustrated.
Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1970. (as Still Life: Camelias)
Washington, D.C., National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, American Impressions: Masterworks from American Art Forum Collections, 1875-1935, March 27–July 5, 1993.
Literature
The Artist Sees Differently: Essays Based Upon the Philosophy of A Collection in the Making by Duncan Phillips, Washington, D.C. and New York, circa 1931, vol. 2, no. 6., pl. cc., illustrated.
H. Kramer, "Marsden Hartley, American Yet Cosmopolitan," New York Times, January 20, 1968, vol. XCVII, no. 40,173, p. 25.
E.H. Turner, In the American Grain: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1995, p. 32.
This painting is included in The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project: Complete Paintings and Works on Paper, with Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine. We are grateful for Gail R. Scott's assistance with the cataloguing of this painting and to Charlie Parsons, Assistant Director for preparing the following essay.
Over the course of his career, Marsden Hartley frequently returned to the still life genre to explore new techniques and reinvent himself stylistically. Although undated, this painting belongs to a group of related still lifes—vertical compositions depicting vases or goblets over tilted tables, backgrounded by rigid, sculptural drapery. Two comparable paintings, Color Analogy (Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, accession no. 1931.174) and Still Life No. 15 (Art Institute of Chicago, reference no. 1949.547) were both assigned a date of ca. 1917 by Hartley's biographer, Elizabeth McCausland (1899-1965).
The present work reflects a shift in Hartley's style following his return from Germany in 1915. Barbara Haskell describes the change as a movement away from the expressive symbolism and mystical content that defined his German abstractions, towards purely formal concerns: "What remained was the structural format of cubism" (B. Haskell, Marsden Hartley, New York, 1980, p. 55). Camellias in a Vase demonstrates a fluency with the avant-garde art Hartley saw in Europe held in tension with his desire to set himself apart, as an American and as an individual. The work is deliberately flattened, with its slanted table, spatially ambiguous background, and stoney drapery, showing a familiarity with Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and cubism. At the same time, the approach to color and composition is uniquely Hartley's—the simplified centrality of the vase and flowers and the intense tonality of blues, pinks and purples set against the more muted backdrop are absent from the European works that may have influenced him and evidence an effort to invent a personal style through formal experimentation.
When Duncan Phillips included the painting in a 1927 exhibition of modernist still lifes among works by Georges Braque (1882-1963) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954), he singled out Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) together as two artists harnessing a certain level of personal intensity. In the introductory text, Phillips wrote, "more intense in feeling are the pictures by Georgia O'Keeffe and Marsden Hartley. They are almost ritualistic in their passion over their patterns and the emotional meaning of their colors." Phillips contrasts their work with the other Americans in the show, including Karl Knaths (1891-1971), who he suggested "show more French influence" (D. Phillips, Intimate Decorations: Chiefly Paintings of Still Life in New Manners, Washington, D.C., 1927, n.p). In a few words, Phillips characterizes Hartley as an artist who is familiar with European art movements and paints from an energetic, personal perspective, but is comparatively less beholden to international trends than his contemporaries.
About thirty years later in 1968, Hilton Kramer (1928-2012) wrote similar praise for the painting in his review of the exhibition at Knoedler galleries. Kramer calls Camellias in a Vase a "small masterpiece of pictorial construction" and later notes, "these are pictures in which his understanding of the radical movements in European art has been absorbed at a more personal level of expression..." (H. Kramer, "Marsden Hartley, American Yet Cosmopolitan," New York Times, January 20, 1968, p. L25). Over the decades, Camellias in a Vase has achieved critical praise for its facility of contemporary trends fused with formal inventiveness and personal perspective. This museum-quality work marks an important transitional period in Hartley's journey as an artist.
Saleroom notices
Please note that the correct medium for this work should read oil on board.