Two Sloops on a Squally Sea, 1939, demonstrates John Marin’s desire to capture the rocky islands and rough waters characteristic of his new Maine home. In 1934, he bought a cottage and lobster boat on Cape Split, Maine. Having grown tired of his earlier painting locales in Casco Bay and Stonington, Marin found new inspiration in Cape Split. In contrast to the artist’s earlier watercolors, which were often painted thinly, wet-on-wet, Two Sloops on a Squally Sea features a thick, built-up pictorial surface. The impasto foreground evokes heavy pounding waves, while dark colors, specifically Marin’s use of black pigment, convey the stormy atmosphere from which the painting draws its name. Marin’s commitment to depicting the powerful, primal forces of the ocean directly link him to Winslow Homer, the 19th Century master renowned for his Maine scenes. For instance, Ralph Flint, an art critic from the New York Sun described Marin as “the lineal descendant of the master of Prout’s Neck.”[1] Marin was often cited as Homer’s successor, yet the energy, expression and physicality that Marin instilled in his oeuvre would push past modernism and find its own descendants in the next generation of Abstract Expressionists.

[1] Ralph Flint, “John Marin Blazes New Trails,” New York Sun, January 16, 1937, p. 31 quoted in Martha Tedeschi, John Marin’s Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism (Art Institute of Chicago, 2010), p. 162.