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©
Estate of Marsden Hartley, Yale University Committee on Intellectual Property
Marsden Hartley

Bach Preludes et Fugues

1912
Oil on Canvas mounted on masonite.
61 x 50.8 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
575
(
1983.2
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 Temporary exhibition rooms: Guardi and Venice in the Collection of the Gulbenkian Museum 14 Temporary exhibition rooms: Guardi and Venice in the Collection of the Gulbenkian Museum 15 Temporary exhibition rooms: Guardi and Venice in the Collection of the Gulbenkian Museum 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Temporary exhibition rooms 54 Temporary exhibition rooms 55 Temporary exhibition rooms 56 Temporary exhibition rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Marsden Hartley was one of the pioneers of American Modernism. In 1909 his work was shown for the first time at 291, the gallery belonging to Alfred Stieglitz, who brought him into contact with the New York avant-garde circles and financed his European travels from 1912 onwards. In the Old Continent Hartley struck up a friendship with Gertrude Stein and discovered Cubism, as well as German Expressionism, which captivated him for its manner of expressing emotions. From the assimilation of these two trends he shaped what would be his personal style, which fuses the spatial structuring of synthetic Cubism with an expressionistic use of colour.

Bach Preludes et Fuges is one of the first works Hartley produced in the French capital and it denotes the influence of Cézanne’s painting, which he discovered on arriving in Paris, and the Cubism of Picasso — particularly the Architect’s Table of 1912, which hung in the Steins’ sitting room. The references to music in this painting are related both to musical compositions by Braque and to the mystic ideas of Kandinsky, particularly his theories on synesthesia. In addition to his studying of Kandinsky’s writings, particularly Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Townsend Ludington also points out the significance of Hartley’s discovery of the works of Henri Bergson and the mystics Eckhart, Tauler, Suso and Ruysbroeck in giving shape to his thoughts.

Lest there should be any doubt about his intention to create a visual language capable of eliciting emotions similar to those aroused by music, Hartley wrote on the lower part of the composition “BACH / PRELUDES ET FUGUES.” In his monograph on the painter, Bruce Robertson speaks of the universally recognised relationship between music and painting at the time and mentions another two works devoted to Bach also executed in 1912, Hommage à J.S. Bach by Georges Braque and Coloured Composition (Homage to Johann Sebastian Bach) by August Macke. In December 1912 Hartley wrote to Stieglitz that in Paris he had met a painter from Munich who was also working on the musical principles of painting and who had praised his work as “the first to express pure mysticism in this modern tendency.” As Gail Levin points out, it is not difficult to imagine that this was August Macke, who paid a visit to his friend Robert Delaunay in Paris in October 1912.

Hartley clearly defines the future path his painting was to follow in the aforementioned letter to Stieglitz: “I am rapidly gaining ground in this variety of expression and I find it to be closest to my own temperament and ideals. It is not like anything here. It is not like Picasso — it is not like Kandinsky, not like any ‘Cubism’. It is what I call for want of a better name subliminal or cosmic Cubism. It will surprise you. I did these things before I went to London as a result of spiritual illumination and I am convinced that it is my real and true utterance. It combines a varied sense of form with my own sense of color which I believe has never needed stimulation.”

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Primeras vanguardias norteamericanasPaintingOilCanvas mounted on masonite
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Bach Preludes et Fugues. Marsden Hartley
Bach Preludes et Fugues
Marsden Hartley

©

Estate of Marsden Hartley, Yale University Committee on Intellectual Property

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Bach Preludes et Fugues. Marsden Hartley
Bach Preludes et Fugues
Marsden Hartley

©

Estate of Marsden Hartley, Yale University Committee on Intellectual Property

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