For the first time, the extraordinary work of Lewiston-born artist Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) is being made available online for the public.

Presented by the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project and Bates College Museum of Art, the comprehensive digital collection showcases more than 1,600 paintings, drawings, pastels and prints created by the influential modernist artist.

The catalogue includes attribution, provenance, exhibit history and a bibliography for each piece of artwork.

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943). Mt. Katahdin, 1941. Oil on Masonite, 22 x 28 in. (Courtesy of a private collection)

Among the pieces is the painting “Mt. Katahdin.” Its entry includes its alternate titles, its year (1941), medium (oil on masonite), dimensions and who owns it. There’s also detailed provenance, a list of the places where it has been exhibited (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City) and several links to published references.

Another work is “Down East Young Blades” (1940). The 40″ x 30″ oil on academy board painting is neither signed or dated, but is known to be a Hartley. It too includes comprehensive information.

The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project site includes the history of its creation, a lengthy Hartley biography and collections of essays written about him.

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943). Down East Young Blades, ca. 1940
Oil on academy board, 40 x 30 in. (Image courtesy Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. The Douglas Tracy Smith and Dorothy Potter Smith Fund; The Dorothy Clark Archibald and Thomas L. Archibald Fund, The Evelyn Bonar Storrs Trust Fund, The American Paintings Purchase Fund, and the Krieble Family Fund for American Art (1999.11.1)

Art historian and Hartley expert Gail R. Scott of Portland gets much of the credit.

Scott served as curator and contributor to several Hartley exhibits, authored a 1988 Hartley monograph and edited a volume of Hartley’s essays titled “On Art by Marsden Hartley,” along with the 1987 book “The Collected Poems of Marsden Hartley.”

Scott was named assistant curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art after earning a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University and a master’s in art history from the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Bronxville, New York, she knew little about Hartley until her mentor William Hillman took her to a major Hartley exhibition at the University of Southern California.

Hillman also gave her a well-worn copy of Hartley’s selected poems, which she still treasures. Soon afterward, Scott was assigned to research a potential Hartley exhibition. Although that exhibition never materialized, it sparked a lifelong fascination with Hartley.

Art historian Gail Scott. (Courtesy Gail Scott)

Scott believes few things are more important than art, and that drove her desire to provide easy access to Hartley’s work.

“It’s one of the magical and healing and absolutely essential parts of being human and being alive and wanting beauty in one’s life,” said Scott.

To her, nobody does it better than Hartley.

“Marsden Hartley goes deeper into his subjects and the word of poetry and the spiritual meanings of poetry and art than any other artist that I’ve ever studied,” said Scott.

Scott, who has lived in Maine since 1980, started working on the catalog in 2012. By 2019, she realized that the scope of the undertaking warranted an institutional sponsor.

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943). Winter Wind-Maine Coast, 1941.
Oil on canvas, 20 13/16 x 16 3/16 in.(Courtesy San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego Museum purchase with funds from the Gerald and Inez Grant Parker Foundation (1973.134)

Bates College Museum of Art was the logical choice, since its collection includes more than 400 drawings, paintings and ephemera created by or owned by Hartley.

Scott said the museum immediately put their grant writers to work, securing funds from the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, the Vilcek Foundation and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, along with private donations.

A website was created to house the catalogue, and Scott was able to hire Charles Parsons as assistant director for research. Parsons lives in New York City, which Scott said makes it easier to gain access to libraries, galleries, archives and museums.

William Low, a longtime Bates employee, is in the part-time role of assistant project management director, with primary responsibility for image procurement.

Bob Keyes, editorial director at Colby College and chair of the Maine Arts Commission, said the project is significant.

“Nobody’s ever done it before and this is the first effort to document and chronicle all of his known paintings and it’s a massive undertaking,” said Keyes, who was previously the arts writer at the Portland Press Herald and had been writing about the beginning of the Hartley project since 2020.

“As time goes on, things get lost to time, history and otherwise,” Keyes said. “The documentation is a really important process and critical for the continued understanding of where he fits in, why he’s significant and just scholarship in general.”

The public can access the Marsden Hartley Legacy Project catalogue at marsdenhartleylegacy.org.