{
"data": {
"id": 150530,
"accession_number": "1981.83",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Military, 1914\u20131915. Marsden Hartley (American, 1877\u20131943). Oil on canvas; framed: 73.5 x 63.5 x 3.5 cm (28 15/16 x 25 x 1 3/8 in.); unframed: 60.6 x 50.2 cm (23 7/8 x 19 3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Professor Nelson Goodman, 1981.83",
"current_location": "226A American Modern",
"title": "Military",
"creation_date": "1914\u20131915",
"creation_date_earliest": 1914,
"creation_date_latest": 1915,
"artists_tags": [
"male",
"LGBTQ+ (after 1900)"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "oil on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "American Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "American - Painting",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 73.5 x 63.5 x 3.5 cm (28 15/16 x 25 x 1 3/8 in.); Unframed: 60.6 x 50.2 cm (23 7/8 x 19 3/4 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.735,
"width": 0.635,
"depth": 0.035
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.606,
"width": 0.502
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed on reverse of fabric: Marsden Hartley",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 309849,
"title": "Year in Review for 1984",
"description": "Year in Review for 1984. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 3-May 5, 1985).",
"opening_date": "1985-04-03T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 321951,
"title": "Dictated by Life: Marsden Hartley's German Paintings and Robert Indiana's Hartley Elegies",
"description": "Dictated by Life: Marsden Hartley's German Paintings and Robert Indiana's Hartley Elegies. Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN (organizer) (co-organizer) (April 14-June 11, 1995); Terra Museum of American Art (July 1-September 10, 1995); The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL (October 1-December 2, 1995).",
"opening_date": "1995-04-14T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 227084,
"title": "Made in U.S.A., l'art am\u00e9ricain, 1908-1943, entre nationalisme et internationalisme [FRAME]",
"description": "Made in U.S.A., l'art am\u00e9ricain, 1908-1943, entre nationalisme et internationalisme [FRAME]. Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, F-33000 Bordeaux, France (organizer) (October 5-December 31, 2001); Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Rennes, France (January 17-March 31, 2002); Mus\u00e9e Fabre, Montpellier, France (April 10-June 25, 2002).",
"opening_date": "2001-10-05T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 181802,
"title": "The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Cleveland, OH (June 9-August 20, 2006).",
"opening_date": "2006-06-09T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1981-",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Professor Nelson Goodman [1906-1998], Cambridge, MA, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"Goodman purchased the painting directly from Charles Demuth's heir, Robert Locher, and his partner, Richard Weyand.
"
],
"date": "Probably 1956-1981",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Robert Locher [1888-1956], Lancaster, PA, sold to Nelson Goodman",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"Locher, Demuth's longtime companion, was the principal beneficiary of his estate. According to Nelson Goodman, the painting had been hanging in the Demuth house in Lancaster, PA, where Locher had resided with his partner, Richard Weyand, since Demuth\u2019s death in 1935. Goodman indicates that he purchased the painting from Demuth's \"heirs,\" Locher and Weyand; however, only Locher was Demuth's heir. It is possible that Weyand should also be included in this provenance: if Goodman bought the painting in 1956 after Locher's death but before Weyand's several months later, than Weyand would have been the owner at the time of the purchase.
"
],
"date": "1935-probably 1956",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Charles Demuth [1883-1935], Lancaster, PA, by descent to Robert Locher",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"At some point, Charles Demuth, Hartley's close friend, obtained the painting. While Demuth knew Barnes well and often visited him, the exact circumstances surrounding the former's acquisition of the painting are unknown.
"
],
"date": "After 1921-1935",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "Albert C. Barnes [1872-1951], Philadelphia, PA",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"Barnes purchased this painting, along with three others, at the sale of Hartley's collection on May 10, 1921. Shortly after the auction, Barnes asked Hartley about the possibility of purchasing two more paintings, which Hartley was offering for $350 each. Barnes offered only $50, and Hartley passed the letter to his dealer, Alfred Stieglitz, who never responded. After the incident, Barnes stopped acquiring works by Hartley and eventually removed Military from his collection.
"
],
"date": "1921-",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "(Hartley sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, May 10, 1921, as \u201cPre-War Pageant, 1913,\" sold to Albert C. Barnes)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"By the spring of 1921, Hartley had become desperately poor, having failed to attract any real following in the United States, and so he was forced to sell off a large portion of his oeuvre at auction.
"
],
"date": "1921",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "Collection of the artist",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1914/1915-1921",
"sortorder": 7
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Hartley was one of the first modern artists to paint abstractions.",
"description": "This abstract portrait is a memorial tribute to a German lieutenant named Karl von Freyburg with whom Hartley had been in love. The artist described von Freyburg\u2019s death as an \"unendurable agony,\" and created a series of deeply personal paintings in response. Here the shapes and color patterns suggest flags, banners, targets, epaulets, and other military paraphernalia.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60474821"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Anderson Galleries, Inc. Seventy-Five Pictures by James N. Rosenburg and 117 Pictures by Marsden Hartley. 1921.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Levin, Gail. \"Hidden Symbolism in Marsden Hartley's Military Pictures.\" Arts Magazine 54, no. 2 (October 1979).",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 58",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Haskell, Barbara. Marsden Hartley. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art in association with New York University Press, 1980.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 45, n. 43",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"The Year in Review for 1984.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72 (April 1985)",
"page_number": "Reproduced: n. 49",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Robinson, William H. \"Marsden Hartley's Military.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76 (January 1989)",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 2, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22; Reproduced: front cover illustration",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "McDonnell, Patricia. \"Indian Fantasy: Marsden Hartley's Myth of Amerika in Expressionist Berlin.\" North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin XVI (1993)",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 56; Reproduced: p. 58, no. 9",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Chong, Alan. European and American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 100",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Robertson, Bruce. Marsden Hartley. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1995.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 63",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "French Regional & American Museums Exchange. Made in USA: L'art am\u00e9ricain, 1908-1947. Paris: \u00c9ditions de la R\u00e9union des mus\u00e9es nationaux, 2001.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 91",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"L\u2019art Am\u00e9ricain d\u00e9barque.\" Le Magazine: Arts & Spectacles (January 2002)",
"page_number": "Reproduced: unpaginated",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "McDonnell, Patricia. \"'Portrait of Berlin': Marsden Hartley and Urban Modernity in Expressionist Berlin.\" In Marsden Hartley, edited by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser. New Haven: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2002.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 40, 51, 54",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Voorhies, James Timothy, ed. My Dear Stieglitz: Letters of Marsden Hartley and Alfred Stieglitz, 1912-1915. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: no. 6, unpaginated",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "McDonnell, Patricia. Painting Berlin Stories: Marsden Hartley, Oscar Bluemner, and the First American Avant-Garde in Expressionist Berlin. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 97; Reproduced: p. 98, fig. 10",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Litt,Steven. \"'Geometry' draws us in, yet theme fails to come full circle.\" The Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 18, 2006.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. J5",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Adams, Henry. Whats American about American Art? A Gallery Tour in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 123; Reproduced: p. 122",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cash, Sarah \"Berlin Abstraction.\" In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945, edited by Sarah Cash. Seattle: Marquand Books, Inc., 2011.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 211",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "McDonnell, Patricia, and Michael Plante. Dictated by Life: Marsden Hartley's German Paintings and Robert Indiana's Hartley Elegies. Minneapolis, MN: Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota; New York, NY: Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 1995.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: pp. 30, 55",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Chassey, Eric de. Made in USA: l'art ame\u0301ricain, 1908-1943, entre nationalisme et internationalisme. Paris: Re\u0301union des muse\u0301es nationaux, 2001.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 91",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 118, no. 58; Reproduced: pp. 57, 64",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1981.83",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of Professor Nelson Goodman",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Dr. Robert B. Benyo Trust Gallery",
"athena_id": 150530,
"creators": [
{
"id": 3104,
"description": "Marsden Hartley (American, 1877\u20131943)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1877",
"death_year": "1943",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1982-03-08T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1914,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1914\u20131915",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:10:47.839000"
}
}