Alfred Stieglitz's 291 gallery opened a solo exhibition of paintings by Marsden Hartley, running from January 12 to February 14, 1914. The show came after Hartley's earlier 291 debut and at the moment when his work was absorbing European modernism, especially the examples of Cezanne, Picasso, Kandinsky, and Matisse. In 1914 Hartley was also developing the symbolic, abstracted language associated with his German paintings, including the memorial and military imagery that would culminate around Portrait of a German Officer. At 291, such work reached a New York audience through one of the few American galleries then willing to present advanced modern art as a serious artistic program rather than a curiosity.
The exhibition strengthened Hartley's position within Stieglitz's American modernist circle.
