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Ghosts of the Forest

Marsden Hartley

American Art

From 1937 until his death, Marsden Hartley painted annually in his native state of Maine, returning each year to a landscape that he described as "strong, simple, stately" and "brutal." He adopted a boldly expressionistic, deliberately "primitive" style to convey his powerful response to this rugged, forbidding landscape. In Ghosts of the Forest, random piles of driftwood, bleached into pale, spectral shapes by exposure to the elements, dominate the foreground.

MEDIUM Oil on academy board
DATES ca. 1938
DIMENSIONS 22 1/8 x 28in. (56.2 x 71.1cm) frame: 29 1/2 × 35 3/8 × 2 1/2 in. (74.9 × 89.9 × 6.4 cm)  (show scale)
COLLECTIONS American Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 40.711
CREDIT LINE John B. Woodward Memorial Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Marsden Hartley (American, 1877–1943). Ghosts of the Forest, ca. 1938. Oil on academy board, 22 1/8 x 28in. (56.2 x 71.1cm). Brooklyn Museum, John B. Woodward Memorial Fund, 40.711 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 40.711_PS9.jpg)
IMAGE overall, 40.711_PS9.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2016
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