  About the Artwork
  
  
  American modernist Marsden Hartley called paintings like this "sea signatures," finding their subjects "in the shape of shells -- crabs -- piece of rope and little things I pick up as I walk these shores alone -- each day."

Hartley painted this still life in the summer of 1936 while boarding with a family of fishermen on East Point Island in Nova Scotia. Rendered using a limited color palatte, this flat and abstracted painting shows a scattered collection of seashells and torn length of rope against a brown background. In a letter to his friend and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, Hartley announced that he had "only just decided to return to monochrome as being colorful enough - inasmuch as spectrum tones weary my eyes down to an ache."
  
  
  Title
  Still Life: Rope and Shells
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1936
  
  Artist
  Marsden Hartley
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1877-1943
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on academy board
  
  
  Dimensions
  Overall: 15 7/8 × 12 inches (40.3 × 30.5 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Merrill Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  41.87
  
  
  Copyright
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