BLOUNT GALLERY
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Reginald Marsh
(Paris, France, 1898 - 1954, Dorset, Vermont) Sand Hogs ca. 1940 Twentieth Century Oil on canvas 50 1/2 in. x 30 1/4 in. (128.27 cm x 76.84 cm) Signed, lower left: "REGINALD MARSH' Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, The Blount Collection 1989.0002.0030 Reginald Marsh’s habit of constructing compositions from drawings is evident in "Sand-Hogs", an image of men working in an underground excavation. It appears that Marsh combined different sketches to create this scene, painting the background from one sketch and each of the figures from separate drawings, perhaps made at different times and places. This gives the figures the appearance of floating in front of the background, rather than being integrated into it. The studied gestures and poses of the workers are not interrelated, suggesting that Marsh analyzed their individual movements in drawings and transposed them to the painting as separate entities. The labor portrayed here was ongoing in mid-twentieth-century New York, as workers built or repaired the elaborate system of tunnels and bridges that connect the city’s boroughs by road or rail. The excavators were called “sand-hogs.” The museum received this painting with documentation indicating that it once belonged to Edward Laning, an artist friend of Marsh’s who sometimes accompanied him on sketching expeditions. Laning noted that Marsh gave him the work in around 1939 or 1940, and that “to the best of my recollection this is the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel which Marsh sketched when it was under construction.” Construction of this tunnel began in October 1940, and it opened in 1950; therefore Laning was mistaken either about the date he received the work or the site depicted. American Paintings from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, cat. no. 77. p. 186. |
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John Marin
(Rutherford, New Jersey, 1870 - 1953) Small Point Harbor, Casco Bay, Maine 1931 Twentieth Century Oil on canvas 22 1/4 in. x 28 1/4 in. (56.52 cm x 71.76 cm) Signed and dated, lower right, Marin/ 31 Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, The Blount Collection 1989.0002.0029 Marin is a Modernist painter primarily known as a watercolorist, however he began to paint in oil when he was past sixty years old. The sea became one of Marin’s major subjects as early as 1931. "Small Point Harbor, Casco Bay, Maine "(1932) is one such painting, and demonstrates Marin’s enormous pleasure in the manipulation of oil paint. In the painting, Marin layers dense impasto in order to build up the constantly moving water, which consumes the majority of the canvas. Two landmasses on either side form the mouth of the harbor, and the sky is a gloomy gray-white. "Small Point Harbor, Casco Bay, Maine" is an important painting in Marin’s oeuvre as it is one of the earliest examples in oil of the artist’s use of broad diagonal bands and rectangular boxes that hover in the sky. |
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Marsden Hartley
(Lewiston, Maine, 1877 - 1943) Earth Warming 1932 Twentieth Century Oil on paperboard 25 1/4 in. x 33 in. (64.14 cm x 83.82 cm) Signed and dated, center verso: "Marsden Hartley/1932" Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, The Blount Collection 1989.0002.0015 "Earth Warming" is one of twenty paintings in a series titled "Murals for an Arcane Library" created while Hartley was living in Mexico. Having won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931, Hartley elected to paint and study there for a year, arriving in March of 1932. It is believed that "Earth Warming" was painted in Cuernavaca in 1932. Although not naturalistic, the painting is clearly a rugged and mountainous landscape. The brilliant red rock formations appear to soak in the rich, reflective colors of the sun’s rays. When contrasted with the clear blue sky and rolling white clouds it is as if Hartley is attempting to communicate the essence of spirituality—that which is physically unseen—through the contrasting natures of hot and cold coloration. Hartley was drawn to mountainscapes and monolithic shapes throughout his career, in seemingly every locale he visited, and these looming structures were consistently located and recorded. The monumental nature of these forms suggested nature’s inescapable power over man. American Paintings from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, cat. no. 58, p. 148. |
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William Hunt Diederich
(Hungary, 1884 - 1953, Tappan, New York) Playing Greyhounds 1913-1916 Twentieth century Bronze 15 in. x 23 in. x 8 in. (38.1 cm x 58.42 cm x 20.32 cm) Not Marked Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Association Purchase, in honor of Carolyn and Winton M. "Red" Blount 1996.0004 Sculptor William Hunt Diederich was born into a privileged family in Hungary. His father raised horses for the Prussian cavalry and his mother was the daughter of renowned American painter William Morris Hunt (and the niece of prominent architect Richard Morris Hunt). Diederich studied at the Pennsylvania Academy and in Europe, and exhibited internationally. Today he is recognized as a sculptor, but also as a designer of functional, but decorative metalwork including wrought iron and brass objects, fire screens and weather vanes. In the mid-1910s Diederich created several different sculptures depicting greyhounds, two of which are currently owned by the Seattle Art Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art. The MMFA 's work is very similar to Seattle’s "Greyhounds Playing" of 1920, but is slightly smaller and the composition is more compact. "Playing Greyhounds" clearly demonstrates Diederich’s portrayal of the breed’s personality, his mastery of design, and his craftsmanship. |
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Childe Hassam
(Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1859 - 1935, East Hampton, New York) Fruit Still Life 1930 Twentieth Century Oil on panel (wood) 10 in. x 32 in. (25.4 cm x 81.28 cm) Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, The Blount Collection 1989.0002.0016 |
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