Buildings
<p>Three watercolor sketches—<a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/2913"><em>Skyline with Boats in Foreground</em></a>; <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/2905"><em>New York Skyline, Boats in Foreground</em></a>; and this sheet, <em>Buildings</em>—adopt views of the densely clustered buildings of New York seen from the Hudson River and demonstrate the diversity of Marin’s watercolor techniques at this time. Their differences point to his growing desire to experiment with his methodology as a watercolor painter. This sketch, possibly made from the Brooklyn Bridge, takes a view of the skyline similar to the other two, yet Marin transformed the small sheet into a kind of floating fantasy. He combined the fluid, improvisational technique of the Weehawken scenes with warm-cool color contrasts, a palette that he soon developed into the iridescent effects seen in his later watercolors.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1909
- Dimensions
- 18.7 × 23.1 cm (7 3/8 × 9 1/8 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- John Marin
Artist
Painting
John Marin was an American modernist painter and printmaker known for his dynamic watercolors and etchings of coastal landscapes, particularly Maine. Working primarily in watercolor from the 1910s onward, he developed a fractured, energetic visual language that synthesized Cubist fragmentation with direct observation of nature. His gestural brushwork and bold use of paper's white ground anticipated Abstract Expressionism while maintaining a strong sense of place and atmospheric condition. Marin spent decades based in Maine, where the rocky coastlines and maritime environment became the primary subject of his mature work.
Full artist profile →More
More by John Marin
Approaching Fog
1952 · Watercolor with blotting, wiping and traces of scraping, and with brush and black ink, graphite, fabricated charcoal, and touches of opaque watercolor on medium-weight, rough-textured, off-white wove paper (four edges trimmed)
Movement: Boats and Objects, Blue Gray Sea
1947 · Oil on canvas
Brooklyn Bridge - on the Bridge, No. 2
1944 · Etching
Cape Split, Maine
1941 · Watercolor with touches of blotting, and with graphite and black colored pencil, on lightweight (estimated), slightly textured, ivory wove paper (top, left and right edges trimmed), laid down on artists’ board faced with ivory wove paper, in original frame
Circus Elephants
1941 · Watercolor with scraping and wiping, and with opaque watercolor, graphite and black crayon, on medium-weight, slightly textured, cream laid paper
Movement: Sky and Grey Sea
1941 · Watercolor, charcoal, and pencil on paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- John Marin
- Year
- 1909
- Dimensions
- 18.7 × 23.1 cm (7 3/8 × 9 1/8 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1909-134382
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified