About Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist. Hartley developed his painting abilities by observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin. His birth name was Edmund Hartley; he later assumed Marsden as his first name when he was in his early twenties. These paintings so impressed New York photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz that he agreed on the spot to give Hartley his first solo exhibition at Stieglitz's art gallery 291 in 1909. Hartley traveled to Europe for the first time in April 1912, and he became acquainted with Gertrude Stein's circle of avant-garde writers and artists in Paris.
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