- published: 07 Apr 2011
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Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 - September 2, 1943) was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.
Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, where his English parents had settled. He was the youngest of nine children. His mother died when he was eight, and his father remarried four years later to Martha Marsden. His birth name was Edmund Hartley; he later assumed Marsden as his first name when he was in his early 20s.
Hartley began his art training at the Cleveland Institute of Art after his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1892. He won a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art.
In 1898, at age 22, Hartley moved to New York City to study painting at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase, and then attended the National Academy of Design. Hartley was a great admirer of Albert Pinkham Ryder and visited his studio in Greenwich Village as often as possible. His friendship with Ryder, in addition to the writings of Walt Whitman and American transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired Hartley to view art as a spiritual quest.
Actors: Jeremy Irons (actor), Henry Simmons (actor), Luce Rains (actor), Joan Allen (producer), Joan Allen (actress), Tim Carroll (miscellaneous crew), Jeff Beal (composer), Bob Balaban (director), Tyne Daly (actress), Ed Begley Jr. (actor), Kathleen Chalfant (actress), Chad Brummett (actor), Amanda Mason (miscellaneous crew), J.J. Dalton (miscellaneous crew), William Sterchi (actor),
Genres: Biography, Drama, Romance,Actors: Michael Maglaras (actor), Michael Maglaras (director), Terri Templeton (producer), Marsden Hartley (writer),
Plot: In September of 1943, the typescript of a private, unpublished narrative was discovered in Corea, Maine, among the belongings of the American modernist painter and poet Marsden Hartley...just a few days after his death. This powerful and poignant elegy called Cleophas and His Own and written by Hartley to assuage his grief at the loss of a young man he loved, is now a feature-length film directed by Michael Maglaras and produced by Terri Templeton of 217 Films. The film presents Hartley (played by Maglaras) seated in his makeshift studio in Corea in 1943 where, tired and ill, he recounts a tragic story to an unseen visitor of the sad fate that befell the Francis Mason family: a family of farmers and fishermen with whom he lived on a remote island in Nova Scotia seven years before. Using Hartley's text in its entirety and preserving the poem's thirteen-chapter structure, the film uses flashbacks and employs 24 of Hartley's paintings and drawings to tell of the events leading up to and following the Atlantic hurricane of September 19, 1936, when Hartley lost the young man who had become the love of his life. Following the death of this young man, the last seven years of Hartley's life were devoted to reliving these experiences through poetry and painting, leaving behind a body of work, second to none in the American experience, devoted to this young man's memory and his love the Mason family. 2005. Not rated.
Genres: Documentary,