American Art Collaborative

In the summer of 1937, Marsden Hartley returned to Maine, his place of birth and where he would live until his death six years later. He created some of the most powerful works of his career in this period, when he declared himself the “painter from Maine” after years of restless travel. By the late 1930s, the village of Head Tide was in decline and its Congregational Church had been deserted. Hartley emphasized this state of abandonment by depicting the church in the depths of winter, when its stark white exterior was nearly indistinguishable from the snow that surrounded it. Incised lines across the church’s sidewall and the downward strokes that define the facade evoke a sturdily built structure that is nonetheless vulnerable to the passage of time.