Portrait of a German Officer

A tall, upright shape dominates the canvas, built from flat planes of red, blue, yellow, and black against a dark ground. Crosses, badges, and other emblem-like marks cluster around the figure, suggesting rank and ceremony rather than a literal likeness, arranged in an abstract, almost heraldic pattern. The painting was made in 1914 by Marsden Hartley, rendered in oil, and is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, having entered the collection through the Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Hartley, who lived from 1877 to 1943 and worked in the United States, is associated with Expressionism and also engaged with Dada. One detail worth lingering on is how the geometric insignia seem to float independently of any solid body, giving the composition a sense of ornament detached from the human form, as if symbols alone could stand in for a person.