Cape Split, 1939, demonstrates John Marin's desire to capture the rocky islands and coastal 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 changed new inspiration in Cape Split. In contrast to the artist's earlier watercolors, which were often painted thinly, wet-on-wet, Cape Split features a built-up pictorial surface, which allowed the artist to experiment with incised strokes. Marin's commitment to depicting the abstracted and color forms of the rocky coast directly link him to Winslow Homer, the nineteenth 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.