John Marin American, 1870-1953

Islands Looking out from Deer Isle, Maine #2 represents one of Marin’s unique framing practices. According to Ruth Fine, some works, "painted as early as the teens, are mounted on wide gold- or silver-leafed mounts of great elegance, which are generally finished with matching half-inch frame moldings in gold or silver, as appropriate" (Ruth E. Fine, John Marin, Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1990, 201-203.)

Marin described his silver- and gold-leafed mounting practice to Stieglitz in a letter from July 27, 1919: "my gold mat, that’s a wonder. Why? Because it fights and that within it has got to put up such a fight that neither one gets the best of it. Someday I’ll get me a wall with glaring, hideous wallpaper and try and have my things so that they too will fight the things and not be worsted." (Letter from Marin to Alfred Stieglitz, Stonington, Maine, July 27, 1919. Quoted in Dorothy Norman, The Selected Writings of John Marin, New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1949, 44.)