Marsden Hartley (1877-1943)
Green and Purple Grapes in a Basket
oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)
Painted in 1926-28.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Estate of the artist.
Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, consigned from the above, by 1944.
Walter Alfred Bareiss (1919-2007) and Molly (Mary) Campbell (née Stimson) Bareiss (1920-2006), Greenwich, Connecticut, acquired from the above, 1944.
Private collection, New York.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, acquired from the above, March 28, 1968.
Private collection, Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, acquired from the above.
Private collection, Florida.
Sale, Sotheby's, New York, November 28, 2007, lot 34, sold by the above. (as Green and Purple Grapes in Basket)
Dr. John Paul Driscoll (1949-2020), New York, acquired at the above sale.
Bonhams, New York, acquired from the above, 2015.
Sale, Bonhams, New York, November 20, 2017, lot 44, sold by the above.
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale.

Exhibited
New York, Paul Rosenberg & Co., Paintings by Marsden Hartley, 1877-1943, April 16-May 12, 1951, n.p., no. 11. (as Still Life with Green and Purple Grapes)
New York, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Giants: American Modern Masters, October 14-December 19, 2010.
New York, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, Seven Americans: Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Marin, Alfred Stieglitz, and Paul Strand, September 6-October 20, 2012, n.p., pl. 8, illustrated.
Greenville, South Carolina, Greenville County Museum of Art, Arlie Kuntz, Marsden Hartley and American Modernism, August 6-September 21, 2014, pp. 86-87, 99, illustrated.
New York, Driscoll Babcock Galleries, Art is Long, Life is Short: Marsden Hartley and Charles Kuntz in Aix-en-Provence, January 15-March 7, 2015, p. 87, illustrated.

Literature
M. Breuning, 'The Hard Core of Hartley's Native Genius,' Art Digest, vol. 24, no. 8, 1950, p. 9. (as Green and Purple Grapes)
E. McCausland, Elizabeth McCausland Papers, 1838-1995, bulk 1920-1960 Series 6: Marsden Hartley, 1900-1964, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., box 14, folder 44, frames 1–4.
'Gallery Preview,' American Fine Art Magazine, March-April 2015, p. 72, illustrated. (as Green and Purple Grapes)

This painting is included in The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project: Complete Paintings and Works on Paper, with Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine.

The brilliant and cosmopolitan modernist painter Marsden Hartley is noted for his various painting series, including his so-called German Officer paintings, his New Mexico Recollections, the Dogtown pictures, the Mt. Katahdin series, and others. But he was also a prolific and devoted painter of still life subjects. The present work, Green and Purple Grapes in a Basket, dating to 1926-28, demonstrates the clear bright color and sure draftsmanship that marked all of the best paintings Hartley accomplished in the mid to late 1920s. Between June of 1926 and November of 1929, Hartley lived on and off in and out of Aix-en-Provence, the home of the much-admired Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), where he interacted regularly with an array of artists and collectors such as Erle Loran (1905-1999), Charles Philip (Arlie) Kuntz (1897-1928), E. Ambrose Webster (1869-1935) and visitors including Patrick Henry Bruce (1881-1936), Albert Coombs Barnes (1872-1951), and Leo Stein (1872-1949).

Green and Purple Grapes in a Basket recalls some of the Berlin still life prints Hartley had done five years earlier. The painting also asserts the feelings Hartley experienced in the land of Cézanne: 'the first spot on earth where I have felt right – in harmony – body, soul and mind – and if that can't be called a state of 'home' then nothing can.' (as quoted in B. Weber, The Heart of the Matter: The Still Lifes of Marsden Hartely, New York, 2003, p. 54) Hartley would also write to Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) that he spent his 'mornings on still life and if you will believe it – they are in bright color....' (The Heart of the Matter: The Still Lifes of Marsden Hartely, 2003, p. 54) Indeed, as this painting demonstrates, the color is bright, particularly the reds which warm up the composition and give it such an inviting appearance. Hartley's still life paintings of this period are among his most genial images. Painted at a time when he was happy and believed that he had found a place with the spirit of home, he went to work and produced a group of strong reductionist images that are sure measures of his state of mind and his affection for still life subjects.

This was not always the case in Hartley's still life paintings. Often, they can seem out of sync, wooden or off balance. Sometimes the paint seems stiff and uncooperative, and the colors can get muddy. In Green and Purple Grapes in a Basket however, the radiant complimentary interlocking colors, the fruit firmly formed with dexterous brush strokes of generous viscous pigments, and the stable, centered composition all combine in a fluent, elegant example of Hartley's still life art at its sympathetic best.