English: Mt. Katahdin (Maine), Autumn #2

Artist: Marsden Hartley (American, Lewiston, Maine 1877–1943 Ellsworth, Maine) Date: 1939–40 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 30 1/4 × 40 1/4 in. (76.8 × 102.2 cm) Classification: Paintings Credit Line: Edith and Milton Lowenthal Collection, Bequest of Edith Abrahamson Lowenthal, 1991

Beginning in the mid-1930s, Hartley, a restless artist who had previously been associated with the European avant-garde, proclaimed himself to be the "Painter from Maine." Between 1939 and 1942, he created more than eighteen bold paintings of Maine’s highest peak, Mount Katahdin, a geological landmark that, as the northernmost terminus of the Appalachian Trail, resonated with both regional and national symbolism. Hartley’s flat and rough-hewn depiction of form aligns his work with folk art, which audiences and critics embraced throughout the period as inherently American.