?Movement, Bermuda? is a work by cubist painter Marsden Hartley and it has finally, like the sailboats the painting details, come home.

The Marsden painting was purchased for the Masterworks Bermudiana Collection by a generous group of individuals last week.

The group of art-loving individuals pooled their funds and purchased the work for an undisclosed sum.

?These individuals see the significance in bringing back pieces of artwork depicting the Island, which signify some of Bermuda?s greatest treasures,? said Masterworks director Tom Butterfield.

?These individuals have helped us in our mission of bringing art home and contributing to Bermuda?s cultural heritage.?

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) was at the centre of the American Modernist movement and perhaps the most important artist among the early American cubists, he said. ?Movement Bermuda? is a very significant work of this period and is known world-wide.

The painting was conceived during ?The Great Provincetown Summer? of 1916, and it is one of the earliest and most advanced Cubist paintings produced in America, he added.

The artist painted a series of related paintings at the lively artist?s colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts from July through October 1916 and continued in Bermuda during the same winter into 1917 with fellow painter Charles Demuth.

It was in Provincetown and Bermuda that the artist embarked on a new body of almost purely abstract compositions, which included ?Movement, Bermuda?, inspired by the movements of sailboats.

Mr. Butterfield added that the Foundation was very grateful to the individuals who helped them acquire works of art of this calibre.

?The painting completes a triangle for the collection as we already have artwork from two other notable artists, Albert Gleizes and Charles Demuth, who visited Bermuda in the winter of 1916/1917 at the same time as Hartley.?