In 1913, Marin wrote to his friend and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz about how his first works in each new place were "the beginning of the opening up of all those mental voyages to anywhere and everywhere." It took Marin many years to work out this elaborate rhythm of travel and creation. "I was a kid until I was thirty," he said. But his artistic blossoming in the second decade of the twentieth century proved well worth the wait. During those ten years, he advanced from being an unknown etcher to broad acclaim as one of the leading modern painters in the United States.
Read John Marin: Mental Voyages to Anywhere and Everywhere By Ann Prentice Wagner
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Marin's varied watercolor techniques included blotting, wetting, wiping, and scraping off pigment to develop rich compositions that convey the hazy alpine atmosphere and swift-moving water of the mountain stream. Unlike many of his modernist contemporaries, who continued to travel to Europe throughout their careers, Marin’s 1910 trip would be his last.
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John Marin
The Tyrol, 1910Watercolor on paper
15½ x 18¼ inches
39.4 x 46.4 cm -
John Marin
West Point, Maine, 1914Watercolor on paper
14⅞ x 16¼ inches
37.8 x 41.3 cm -
"Working in oil on small pieces of canvas board near the waters and harbors of Manhattan, John Marin (1870-1953) was possibly the first American artist to make abstract paintings. There are other candidates -among them Marsden Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe- but it is thought that Marin got there first. Working in Weehawken, N. J. , he began a series of about 100 oil sketches now called the Weehawken Sequence in 1910, shortly after returning from a five-year sojourn in Paris, and kept at it until 1916."
— Roberta Smith, The New York Times, February 17, 2011
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John Marin
By the Sea, Small Point, Maine, 1917Watercolor on paper
15⅞ x 18⅞ inches
40.3 x 47.9 cm -
John Marin
Low Tide, Moosehead Point, Maine, 1919Watercolor and charcoal on paper
13⅝ x 16½ inches
34.6 x 41.9 cm -
In the summer of 1919, the Marins returned to Maine, renting a house in the fishing port of Stonington. Marin wrote to Stieglitz in July 1919, "It seems that Old Man God when he made this part of the Earth just took a shovel full of islands and let them drop." Hikes and boat trips took the artist to many other inspiring views. The Marins would continue to summer in Stonington for most of the 1920s.
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John Marin
On Deer Isle, Maine, 1923Watercolor on paper
16½ x 19⅝ inches
41.9 x 49.8 cm -
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If you would enjoy learning more about the available works, please contact Alana Ricca at (212) 879-8815, or alana@schoelkopfgallery.com. We look forward to being in touch.
