Answer:
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was an American Painter, whose career was highly influenced by the modernist movements while he was living in Europe. He was very versatile, painting many themes, but he’s been known by his Still Life Paintings. He’s classified as an American Modernist Artist, as his artworks have influences from the Abstractionist and Expressionist Movement, in other words, his paintings have elements that are present in both movements.
So it’s incorrect to say that Marsden Hartley’s paintings are abstractionists, but we could classify them as part of the first American Modernism, which consisted of the modernist artist from the beginning of the 20th century.
Those artists are different from the paintings of the mid-nineteenth century, the period that Severin Rosen created many of his paintings. Rosen (1816-1872) is known as one of the greatest American Painters, and his style is called Neo-Classic or Academic. He dedicated his career creating Still Lifes, which is a painting genre (as portraits, historical paintings, landscapes, etc…)
That’s why both are so different in their techniques. While Rosen was tightened to Academic Rules, Shapes, and Colors, Hartley experienced the modernist attempt to deny the classic tradition, searching for new ways to produce art.
Step-by-step explanation:
Still Life is a painting genre that became very popular in the 17th century, maily because of Danish Painters. Soon artists from many countries started to experience and to dedicate their paintings to register “life brevity”, as flowers and fruits last for a short-term time. Others created Still Lifes to describe their patrons lifes. Instead of gathering flowers and fruits, artists depicted badges, insignias, personal objects in their compositions.
In the 19th century, the Still Life Genre was adopted in Art Academy as a professorship. Rosen has dedicated his life by doing them, in a search of the classic perfection in paintings. But in Hartley’s paintings, we see the opposite, as there’s a criticism in his compositions. He wants to paint the way he feels and see the nature, while Rosen idealizes his paintings.