Marsden Hartley

Adelaide Shaffer Kuntz, Bronxville (Hartley’s friend and patron)
Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York (acquired from the above)
Private Collection, Stamford, Connecticut (acquired from the above and sold: Barridoff Galleries, Portland, Maine, April 7, 1984, lot 29, as Still Life with Pear and Lemons)
Richard Ward Foster (acquired at above sale)

Kantstrasse, Berlin, Private showing in artist’s studio, 1923 (possibly)
New York, Bertha Schaefer Gallery, Still Life Painting by European and American Painters, 1944 (possibly)

Oil on canvas, canvas is lined. Surface: In generally good condition aside from faint frame abrasion and surface dust. UNDER UV: There are several small pindots and dots of inpainting, mostly in the lower portion of the pear and lemon to the right.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

We are grateful to Gail. R. Scott for her assistance in researching and cataloguing this work, and for preparing the following essay.

Lemons and Pear is one of a series of canvases executed by Marsden Hartley in the summer and early fall of 1922 in his Berlin studio on Kantstrasse. These still life paintings (perhaps twenty of them), he reported to Alfred Stieglitz in a letter dated September 24, 1922, were mostly small but “the best painting I’ve ever done…true expression…devoid of all that extraneous passion.”[1] He found that close focus on still life objects (simple compositions of fruit lying on irregular shapes of drapery or on plates or baskets) was salutary in the midst of the chaos and monetary inflation of post-war Berlin, which he found to be “a bowlegged republic” devoid of art, literature, or music. In the same letter he mentions that he has begun to make lithographs of these fruit still lifes.

[1] Hartley to Alfred Stieglitz from Berlin, September 24, 1922, Stieglitz Collection, MS 85, Yale Collection of American Art, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.