Brooklyn Museum: American Art: Handsome Drinks

Handsome Drinks

The meaning of the letters in this colorful still life is a mystery, one whose solution may have been intensely personal for Hartley. The letters, and the clean, flat shapes that simultaneously seem to be pasted to the picture plane and register as objects in illusionistic space, recall the Cubist collage aesthetic that Hartley embraced during his stays in Europe. Handsome Drinks is one of the first paintings the artist completed after World War I forced his reluctant return to the United States. It features a glass of green absinthe, a potent drink associated with European café life, a social milieu that Hartley had found extraordinarily stimulating.

Artist: Marsden Hartley, American, 1877-1943
Medium: Oil on composition board
Dates: 1912
Dimensions: 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
Inscriptions: Inscribed verso upper left: "Handsome Drinks,/Handsome Drinks/Marsden Hartley"
Collections: American Art
Museum Location: This item is on view in Luce Visible Storage and Study Center, 5th floor
Accession Number: 72.3
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Milton Lowenthal
Image: Overall, 72.3_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph

Collections: American Art: Handsome Drinks