Weehawken, New Jersey
<p>Unified by somber blue-gray washes painted wet-into-wet and enlivened by small touches of bright, warm color, this sheet recalls watercolors Marin painted of the Seine River. Imbued with the quiet mood of a Whistler nocturne, this watercolor also utilizes an important motif from Chinese painting: the artist suggested the spiky branches of a bare tree with strokes of black watercolor, gracefully balancing and screening the view of the distant skyline. The riverbank at Weehawken was a site Marin knew from his youth; that he was drawn back to it for this perspective on the metropolis bears out his statement, “As for subject matter—I go places intimate to me and in those intimate places I start to paint my painting.”</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1910
- Dimensions
- 22.3 × 29.6 cm (8 13/16 × 11 11/16 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
- 1910
- Dimensions
- 22.3 × 29.6 cm (8 13/16 × 11 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1910-134381
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified