The Last Stone Walls, Dogtown c. 1936 - 1937

Marsden Hartley’s ‘The Last Stone Walls, Dogtown’ is a landscape painting that seems to capture not just a place, but a mood. The way Hartley simplifies forms and flattens space, focusing on process, really speaks to me. Look at the texture of the paint, particularly in the stone wall. The application is thick and matte, creating a tactile quality that invites you to feel the weight and roughness of the stones. Each rock is defined by bold, dark outlines, like a child's drawing. Notice how some of the stones are almost cartoonish, with their heavy black lines and simplified forms, and see how this relates to the overall feeling of the painting, a kind of raw, unrefined honesty. Hartley's work reminds me a bit of Milton Avery, another artist who found beauty in simplicity. But where Avery is often gentle and lyrical, Hartley is more rugged. In the end, these landscapes speak to the idea that painting is a conversation, a constant back-and-forth between artists across time.