The Tree, Bare Island, Maine
<p>For Marin, Maine pines became an iconic symbol of survival in a harsh world. Painting this scene on an island southeast of Stonington, he intentionally roughened the paper, wetting and blotting to blend greens and soften the wide brushstrokes. He drew thick charcoal lines to emphasize the contours of the tree, leaving the interior less defined. Alternating charcoal with watercolor and muddying the two media in an unorthodox manner, he pulled charcoal washes into colors for tone and dragged wet charcoal across wet paper to create rough black marks. Finally, he painted the internal border along the top of the sheet in watercolor and then rearticulated it in charcoal, playing with the tension between illusionism and flatness. The resulting image speaks of strength and the artist’s sense of equilibrium.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1922
- Dimensions
- 43.5 × 52 cm (17 3/16 × 20 1/2 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
- 1922
- Dimensions
- 43.5 × 52 cm (17 3/16 × 20 1/2 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1922-119122
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified