Marsden Hartley painted his most startlingly advanced abstractions during the first years of World War I (March 1914-December 1915) while he was living in Berlin. The city was filled with avant-garde artists from all over the world. During this period he produced a series of abstract portraits of German officers, intensely powerful canvases that reflect not only his revulsion at the horrors of war but also his fascination with the energy and pageantry that accompanied the war's destruction.

This painting, executed in November 1914, shows Hartley's assimilation of both Cubism (the collagelike juxtapositions of visual fragments) and German Expressionism (the coarse brushwork and dramatic use of bright colors and black). In 1916 the artist denied that the objects in the painting had any special meaning (perhaps as a defensive measure to ward off any attacks provoked by the intense anti-German sentiment in America at the time). However, his purposeful inclusion of medals, banners, military insignia, the Iron Cross, and the German imperial flag does evoke a specific sense of Germany during World War I as well as a collective psychological and physical portrait of a particular officer.

The picture shows pointed references to Hartley's close friend Karl von Freyburg, a young cavalry officer who had recently been killed in action, including his initials, his age (24), and his regiment number (4). Hartley's concern with abstraction did not last long (ca. 1911-16). He made several more trips to Europe and spent time in Mexico, the American Southwest, Bermuda, and Nova Scotia before returning home to Maine. His later work, depicting the hard-working people and majestic landscape of the state, is simple, direct, and intensely personal.