Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) was a well-traveled American modernist painter, poet, and essayist, but it is his life-long artistic engagement with his home state of Maine that defines his career. Maine served as a creative springboard, a locus of memory and longing, a refuge, and a means of communion with other artists, such as Winslow Homer, who painted there. This is the first book to look at the artist’s complex relationship with the Pine Tree State, providing a nuanced understanding of Hartley’s impressive range in over 80 works, from the early Post-Impressionist interpretations of seasonal change to the late depictions of Mount Katahdin, the most dramatic and enduring series in his oeuvre. 

Randall Griffey is associate curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.