The shard-like flowers in this painting, silhouetted against a dark background, captured the boldness and fragility of life and love for artist Marsden Hartley. He wrote in 1941, “I want the whole body, the whole flesh, in painting.” From 1937 until his death, Hartley spent part of the year in Georgetown, Maine, where he painted still lifes featuring flowers from the garden of his friends, Gaston and Isabel Lachaise. Hartley enhanced the angularity of these flowers by lightly carving into the surface of the wet paint.