Blue Landscape,

1942

In October 1939, late in his life, Hartley made the arduous trek to Maine’s Mount Katahdin, where he produced sketches for what became a remarkable series of nearly twenty paintings executed over the next three years. Although the trip was intended to create salable images of the well-known landmark, it proved a deeply personal encounter. Following his return, he wrote, “I now know my own beloved Maine as I have never known it before, and I shall immortalize that mountain, as no one else has or likely will, as it is my mountain, and I the ‘official’ portraitist of it.” Blue Landscape is among the final pictures of the series and culminates Hartley’s progression from more literal early portrayals toward an increasingly simplified evocation of the peak’s distinctive profile, in which descriptive ridges, shadows, and other details are suppressed in favor of elemental forms of pronounced power and effect.