A Cliff in the Kaatskills

Though separated by several generations, Jervis McEntee and Marsden Hartley both employed emotive styles to express personal impressions of landscape rather than faithful transcripts of nature. In A Cliff in the Katskills (at left), McEntee rendered a well-known natural landmark in the Catskill Mountains with thickly applied daubs of paint, in a departure from the studious detail typical of mid-nineteenth- century landscape painting. The drama of McEntee’s painting, with its imposing boulder and foreboding clouds, is echoed in Marsden Hartley’s seascape. A Maine native, Hartley used an expressionist style of rough brushstrokes, bold outlines, and compressed space to depict the churning sea crashing against the rocky shore.