Lewiston is a pleasant place. That is a simple claim, but it is all that is needed.

You’ll find thousands of people here who agree with that. Of course, it’s natural that the hometown folks will sing their city’s praises. Yet there’s always that perpetual mill town stigma that seems to follow every positive statement about Lewiston’s historic past and remarkable renaissance.

So, what voice of authority could carry enough weight to validate the extraordinary value of these Twin Cities?

Marsden Hartley, Lewiston’s famous native son whose artistic recognition has reached gigantic proportions recently, had many great things to say about his birthplace. Born in 1877, he traveled the world and became known as America’s leading modernist painter. Last May, one of his paintings sold for $6.31 million, eclipsing the auction record at Christie’s in New York for an American modernist work.

Hartley’s final years brought thoughts of Lewiston that he put down in “Androscoggin,” his 1940 book of poetry that celebrates the importance of place he rediscovered just three years before his death.

He wrote eloquently in simple words of free verse about his memories.

“I go back to the Franklin pasture which for us children was the Asia and Africa of our first impressions,” he wrote in the poem he titled “Lewiston Is a Pleasant Place.”

He called the pasture “a deep, religious memory.”

Hartley’s recollections also created poetic paintings of the city’s early days.

He wrote, “There was Dr. Alonzo Garcelon, always known to us as Dr. ‘Gasselon,’ flying through Haymarket Square behind his racing steed, spitting tobacco juice as he went.”

Another memory he gave us from his youth was “Skinny Jinny,” who he said was a familiar figure on Lewiston’s streets.

She was “a tall, dark-clothed woman with her thin arms akimbo under her black shawl, wan-white, frightened of the solitudes that enveloped her being.” He said her appearance sent children “running madly for home” as they imagined a butcher knife hidden under the shawl.

“The Canadians came to the city giving it new life, new fervors, new charms, new vivacities, lighter touches, pleasant shades of cultivation, bringing no harm to the city, bringing what it now has – a freshening of city style, richer sense of plain being,” he wrote.

Hartley also spoke of the mills and factories with the Androscoggin River “flowing by them all, giving the power through the solemn canals, minding one of them, going onward because it had business with the sea.”

Hartley remembered in another poem, “West Pitch at the Falls,” the scenes of boyhood when “the river froze and we skated on the edges of the river above the falls, while men featured horse racing in the center up stream.”

He remembered, “Here and there on the sides, men cutting cakes of ice eighteen inches thick,” and he described how “gulls gather on thin strips of earth near the falls, as if talking of old times.”

He also wrote, “We of the place have often seen the river swell, rise to the bridge, almost carry it away, as it in times past already has done, between Lewiston and lovely Auburn.”

For Hartley, the Lewiston memories meant “the Androscoggin forever flowing solemnly through my brain, coursing in and out of my flesh and bone, as it still does, sacredly.”

His writings also included this quote:

“And so I say to my native continent of Maine, be patient and forgiving. I will put my cheek to your cheek, expecting the welcome of the prodigal, and be glad of it, listening all the while to the slow rich, solemn music of the Androscoggin as it flows along.”

Many of Hartley’s fond memories of Lewiston will be depicted in the premiere of a new hourlong documentary film, “Visible Silence: Marsden Hartley, Painter and Poet,” by Connecticut-based independent filmmakers Michael Maglaras and Terri Templeton.

The screenings at 7 and 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, will be hosted by the Bates College Museum of Art at the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St. Admission will be free but tickets are required. For reservations or more information call 207-786-6135 or e-mail [email protected].