John Marin American, 1870-1953
20.3 x 25.4 cm
Schoelkopf Gallery is the exclusive worldwide representative of the John Marin Foundation.
Around the time Untitled (Seascape, Maine) was executed, John Marin was immersed in creating a series of oils on canvas board inspired by the environs of his Weehawken, New Jersey studio. Later known as the "Weehawken Sequence," this group has been heralded, well beyond its inception, as one of the earliest contributions to abstract art in America. While engrossed in this pivotal body of work, Marin concurrently explored other locales, such as Castorland and the wooded areas of New Jersey. In 1914, he spent his inaugural summer in Maine, a place that would consistently inspire him throughout his career. The present artwork stands out as a noteworthy example of a rare instance where Marin employed oil on the same commercially prepared canvas board as the pieces in the "Weehawken Sequence." Although not an entirely abstract composition, Marin's use of a saturated color palette, skillful incisions into wet paint with the back of the brush, and staccato mark-making showcase his ongoing reimagining of the possibilities of oil paint as a medium. Untitled (Seascape, Maine) provides a glimpse into the experimental painterly techniques and increasingly modernist forms that the artist would continue to embrace in the subsequent decades.
Provenance
The artist; toEstate of the artist, 1953; to
The John Marin Foundation, 2023 until the present