After meeting him on the street in St Paul de Vence, Adelaide and Arlie Kuntz befriended Marsden Hartley and persuaded him to move to Aix-en-Provence with them in 1926. For the spring and summer of 1927, they painted together in Cezanne’s old studio, which was surrounded by flowering white yucca plants.
In 1928, Kuntz, 30, was killed in a motorcycle accident before ever having a public show of his work. For the remainder of Hartley’s life, Adelaide remained a significant patron of Hartley’s work, and some time around 1933, Hartley asked his dealer to get this painting to her.
In 2014, the Greenville County Museum of Art and Driscoll Babcock Gallery organized a two-artist show of Kuntz and Hartley, with works acquired from Kuntz’s daughter’s estate. She had long since sold off White Yucca. And Driscoll let his domain name expire.
[update: there were two other Hartley flower paintings at Sotheby’s today: some roses, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s Pansies—not sure who that’s a portrait of.]
19 Nov 2024, Lot 550: Marsden Hartley, White Yucca, est. $80-120,000, sold for $114,000 [sothebys]