Object number1950.1.5

Indian Composition

Portfolio/Seriesfrom the series Amerika

Date1914

Artist Marsden Hartley (American, 1887-1943)

CultureAmerican

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 47 1/4 x 46 7/8 in. (120 x 119 cm)
Framed: 50 x 49 5/8 x 2 3/4 in. (127 x 126 x 7 cm)

Credit LineGift of Paul Rosenfeld

On View

Not on view

Period20th c

Classification(s)

Painting

Terms

symbols

SignedNot signed

ProvenanceFrom the artist to Alfred Stieglitz, New York; purchased by John Quinn (as Indian Tents); American Art Association Auction, New York, The John Quinn Collection: Paintings and Sculpture of the Moderns, February 11, 1927, no 128 (as Indian Encampment); purchased by Paul Rosenfeld; Paul Rosenfeld estate via Edna Bryner Schwab, executor

Vassar Exhibitions

Jim Dine Prints: 1985 - 2002

What Now? (Or Not Yet)

Exhibition History1914, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, October 6 - November 15, 1964;

Marsden Hartley: Painter/Poet 1877-1943, University Galleries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, November 20 - December 20, 1968; Tucson Art Center, Tucson, AZ, January 10 - February 16, 1969; University Art Museum, University of Texas, Austin, TX, March 10 - April 27, 1969

What is American in American Art, Museum of American Folk Art, New York, NY, February 8 - March 6, 1971;

Art Deco and Its Origins, Heckscher Museum, New York, NY, September 22 - November 3, 1974;

Marsden Hartley, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX, University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, March 4, 1980 - January 11, 1981;

Art from the Ivory Tower: Selections from College and University Collections, Fred L. Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY, April 9 - May 29, 1983;

"Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, September 19, 1984 - September 8, 1985;

America: Art and the West, Perth, Western Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, December 1986 - January 1987, cat. No. 46, illustrated in color, n.p., Sydney, New South Wales, February 6 - April 5, 1987;

Highlights from the Vassar College Art Gallery Collection, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Mount Holyoke College, Hadley, MA, August 2 - November 19. 1990;

Highlights from the Vassar College Collection, IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York, NY, July 13 - September 11, 1993;

Okkultismus und Avantgarde Von Munch bis Mondrian 1900-1915 [Occultism and the Avant-garde 1900-1915], Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, June 3 - August 20, 1995;

Alfred Steiglitz and Modern Art in America, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., January 28 - April 22, 2001;

Marsden Hartley: American Modernist, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 17, 2003 - January 4, 2004;

I Like America, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, September 9, 2006 - January 19, 2007;

Marsden Hartley - The German Paintings, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Berlin, Germany, April 5 - June 29, 2014, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, August 3 - November 30, 2014
DescriptionBorn in Maine, Marsden Hartley was a key member of the group of Amer- ican Modernists promoted by Alfred Stieglitz before the Second World War at his various galleries in New York. Hartley spent the years 1912–1915 abroad in Paris and, later, Berlin, returning only briefly in 1914 to install an exhibition of his work at Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery. Indian Composition, painted in the spring and summer of 1914, was one of seven paintings from a series en- titled Amerika that he executed in 1914/15. The general theme explored his internal conflicts as an American enamored with life in Germany on the eve of war. The first paintings in the series utilize the symbols of Native Amer- ican life, and the later ones add motifs taken from German folk traditions. The Vassar painting has been viewed as reflecting Hartley’s respect for the Native American’s life, lived in harmony with the land, as well as the fascina- tion with this culture viewed through the eyes of Germans, whose familiarity with the American Indian was influenced largely by popular adventure novels such as those by Karl May. The meaning of this painting can best be understood through the words of the artist himself, who in November 1914 wrote to Alfred Stieglitz that “I find myself wanting to be an Indian— to paint my face with the symbols of that race I adore, to go to the West and face the sun forever—that would seem the true expression of human dignity.” Indian Composition was owned by the music critic and writer Paul Rosenfeld before it was given to Vassar following his death by his executor, Edna Bryner Schwab. It was Rosenfeld who in Hartley’s obituary character- ized him as “the gaunt eagle from the hills of Maine.”

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu