Two pristine Hartleys from the same late, great period at auction in
Maine—one offered publicly for the first time in twenty years (see
“Roses” elsewhere on this website) and the one illustrated above
perhaps never offered at auction before—consigned from private
collections unrelated to each other (one from Massachusetts, the other
from Canada)—is an art event. Hartleys, of course, were never common at
auctions, and although we handled a number of them through the years, we
have offered none for a very long time. We in Maine never outwardly
showed much love for this man from Lewiston early in life and later
Corea while he was alive. He was difficult in many ways and his art was
often deeply personal and alienating. We remember a Lewiston postman
who came to the gallery in the late Seventies to tell us that many
people in Lewiston had been given significant work by Hartley, as gifts
as I recall, and most had thrown them out over the years. But there were
those here who always recognized the genius of his work. We had the
benefit of the time between his death in the early 1940s and the
opening of Barridoff Galleries in the early 1970s to have looked,
listened, and learned, but I can’t even imagine not feeling the thrill
of discovery, the frisson of the moment each time a canvas appeared even
had it done so thirty years before. Well, anyway, here are two we are
very proud to offer.

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