LEWISTON – A long-dead painter better known among art lovers around the world than by the people in his beloved hometown was honored Thursday in Lewiston.

The first documentary about artist Marsden Hartley had its world premiere at Bates College’s Olin Arts Center with a pair of free public showings. Gov. John Baldacci also honored the Lewiston native, designating Thursday as Marsden Hartley Day.

“Hartley is the most important of the Early American modernists,” said Mark Bessire, director of the college’s Museum of Art.

Sadly, it was a designation that few of his contemporaries acknowledged. Hartley was born in Lewiston in 1877 and died at a hospital in Ellsworth in 1953 at the age of 61.

He was a contemporary artist throughout his life, Bessire said.

“He always had his own vision,” he said. The late works on Mt. Katahdin were widely loved, he said. But earlier pieces could seem cold.

“He was a tortured soul,” Bessire said. Hartley also had an ego. “He told everybody he was going to be famous.”

Michael Maglaras, who created the documentary, guessed that Hartley would have liked the film.

The documentary chronicles his life: from his boyhood in Lewiston, to his travels in Europe among the best artists in the world and finally his late work.

Its title, “Visible Silence: Marsden Hartley, Painter and Poet,” comes from Maglaras’ own interpretation of Hartley’s last art, which seemed to depict a world at rest.

“Imagine a silence so complete that it actually becomes visible,” Maglaras said Thursday. That’s what Hartley tried to do.

The film opens with quiet, almost-pastoral images of the Androscoggin River and the Bates Mill. Maglaras, a former opera singer from Connecticut, narrates.

It’s a role Maglaras is familiar with.

In 2005, he premiered a contemplative film adaptation of Hartley’s epic poem, “Cleophas and his Own.” In the film, Maglaras read the poem and played Hartley.

He had thought he was finished with the artist until it occurred to him that no one had made a documentary about Hartley.

“We weren’t done,” said Maglaras, who produced the movie with his wife, Terri Templeton. “We did what we could to leave some lasting legacy,” he said.