# 4748d - 2013 First-Class Forever Stamp - Modern Art in America: Marsden Hartley's "Painting, Number 5"

Issue Date: March 7, 2013
City: New York, NY

Quantity: 1,950,000
Printed By: Avery Dennison
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: Serpentine Die Cuts 10 1/2
Color: multicolored

Marsden Hartley’s artwork Painting, Number 5 is one of twelve featured on the Modern Art in America: 1913-1931 stamps.

 

World traveler, author, and painter, Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) saw the creation of art as a spiritual quest.

 

Hartley’s quest began in Cleveland, Ohio, and over the years took him to New York, New Mexico, France, Germany, Bermuda, and Mexico. He was especially inspired by the writings of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau to follow their spiritual paths.

 

One destination that was particularly close to Hartley’s heart was Berlin. He was inspired there by German Expressionism, and collected Bavarian folk art. Hartley also drew inspiration from the German military’s pageantry, and befriended Prussian lieutenant Karl von Freyburg. Freyburg became the subject of several Hartley works, including Painting, Number 5. Hartley created portraits of Freyburg and other officers in a series of paintings using symbols to represent their psychic and physical characteristics. However, as World War I raged in Europe and his friend was killed in action, Hartley no longer saw the romance in war.

 

Hartley eventually returned to the U.S. and devoted much of his last years to painting the people and landscape of Maine. Embracing the Regionalist movement, he became the “painter of Maine,” a place that he felt embodied “the ideal antimodern” – simple and natural.