Marsden Hartley American, 1877-1943

Autumn Cascade belongs to a group of small square landscape studies Marsden Hartley produced circa 1910 in North Lovell, Maine. This period marked an important episode in Hartley’s artistic development: he had earned his first solo exhibition in 1909, held at Alfred Stieglitz’ lauded 291 Gallery, where he also encountered the work of French master colorist Henri Matisse. “I do not sketch these days for I work almost wholly from the imagination—making pictures entirely from this point of view using the mountains only as backgrounds for ideas,” Hartley described. “This is difficult art—almost anybody can paint from nature—it calls for real expert power to create an idea and produce it as one sees it in the mind.” Autumn Cascade reveals Hartley’s radical new approach to modernism, in which expressive brushstrokes and bold use of color become not only technical tools but the subject of the composition.