Still Life

Like many of his contemporaries, Marsden Hartley sought something distinctly American in his work. He employed a simplified, abstract style in this modest still life of a calla lily and drew upon his experience with folk traditions in New Mexico to express what he called “aesthetic sincerity.” Hartley painted Still Life in Europe, several years after his visit to New Mexico. He remained close with many New Mexican artists, including Rebecca James, who owned this painting and later bequeathed it to the New Mexico Museum of Art along with several other important works of art that form the core of the museum’s modernist collection. Still Life includes a calla lily and a red banana, elements that recall Atlantic Window in the New England Character, painted in Bermuda five years earlier. Here there is no view through a window; the still life is tucked into a darkened corner of the room. In addition to the banana, a pear and an apple rest on the table in front of two pitchers: a light-pink one with the calla lily and a smaller dark-red one behind it on the left. Behind the pitchers, on the right-hand side, a fruit bowl holds another pear and perhaps an apple.