Marsden Hartley
Give Us This Day
About
Created by the self-proclaimed “painter from Maine,” Give Us This Day so evocatively captures the New England coast that the viewer can almost hear the seagulls’ calls. In the 1930s, many American artists were embracing their regional identity, and although Hartley traveled widely during his career, by 1937 he was ready to return to his home state.
Until his death in 1943, the artist traveled throughout Maine, capturing mountain views and coastal scenes like this one. Unlike Hartley’s other, more traditionally composed landscapes from this period, Give Us This Day exhibits a methodical symmetry that recalls the artist’s famous Amerika series from 1913-15.
Give Us This Day references the Lord’s Prayer, and while the depicted fishes function as memento mori, they also suggest both Christ’s identity as a fisherman and the biblical story of loaves and fishes. Likewise, the central seagull recalls traditional depictions of the Holy Spirit as a dove, balancing reminders of mortality with the promise of redemption.
Artist
Marsden Hartley
Dimensions
30 × 40 in. (76.2 × 101.6 cm) Framed: 38 1/2 in. × 48 1/2 in. × 4 in.
Credit Line
Art Bridges
Date
1938
Medium
Oil on canvas
Object Number
AB.2018.6
Provenance
Estate of the Artist, 1943; Ione and Hudson Walker, Forest Hills, NY; Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; (Babcock Galleries, New York, NY); Shaklee Corporate Art Collection, San Francisco, CA; Myron Kunin Collection, Minneapolis, MN; (Alexandre Fine Art, New York, NY); Private Collection, TX; to (Sotheby’s Inc., New York, NY); purchased by Art Bridges, TX, 2018
Availability
Partner Story
Building Access Through Virtual and Bilingual Offerings at The Fairfield University Art Museum
Embracing the great diversity of bird life in the region, the Fairfield University Art Museum (FUAM) created Birds of the Northeast: Gulls to Great Auks, an exhibition that celebrated local birds and examined humankind’s impact on our natural world. Featuring works from the nineteenth century to today including Marsden Hartley’s Give Us This Day from the Art Bridges Collection, the exhibition brought together art and science to encourage interdisciplinary thinking.
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