Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Marsden Hartley
American; 20th-century
Rochester, NY: Memorial Art Gallery
67%
Waterfall, Morse Pond. c1940. Oil on board
For the most part Hartley's painted surfaces are never pure paint — pure surface — which is what gives his work its homey charm but which is also what limits it. The blacks that make up the black riverbed in this painting are, here and there, mitigated by daubs of brown or green; there's a streakiness to the trees and to the pools of water that strikes one as sort of fickle. This tendency of Hartley's to soften his pictures' palpable intensity with little realist effects is a problem, but occasionally it works against itself — just look at the touches of thin red paint that decorate the bottom of this image, and how they sit carelessly atop the picture plane. This, along with the unimpeded hardness of the white-grey falling water, is what this painting's done right. (2025)