Alpine Skeletons: Marsden Hartley Silverpoint Drawings

Oct. 20, 2012–Jan. 8, 2013
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing
Mountain Landscape with House in Foreground, September 1933. Silverpoint on paper. 10 5/8 x 14 7/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Mountain Landscape with House in Foreground, September 1933. Silverpoint on paper. 10 5/8 x 14 7/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein(September 16, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein (September 16, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein (September 13, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein (September 13, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Pause

Between September 1933 and March 1934, American artist Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) traveled to Germany. First landing in Hamburg, he wended his way south to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a village in the Bavarian Alps, producing works that captured the spare geometries of the surrounding mountains. In the 21 rarely exhibited silverpoint drawings on view, drawn from The Huntington’s collections, Hartley rendered the immense rock Alps with delicate lines, transforming them into wispy, airy abstractions that he called “skeletons."