Movement No 24–Pertaining to Deer Isle–The Road
<p>Marin described Deer Isle as “a place of lovely spots and bad spots.” The joyful coloring here suggests that he delighted in this scene. Telephone poles dance over the rise alongside a zigzagging road, illustrating the artist’s consciousness of “the wonderful everlasting road a leading onward a dipping a rising a leading up over the hill to the sea beyond.” Two important variations in Marin’s approach to mounting and framing can be seen in this and the adjacent watercolor. He eschewed the gilded mounts he had previously favored, instead applying a very thin silver strip around the edge of the sheet and toning the outer margin with a coordinating watercolor wash.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1927
- Dimensions
- 36 × 44.8 cm (14 3/16 × 17 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
- 1927
- Dimensions
- 36 × 44.8 cm (14 3/16 × 17 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1927-131285
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified
Explore
More Watercolor, with black colored pencil and black crayon, on moderately thick (estimated), slightly textured, ivory wove paper (all edges trimmed), laid down on wood-pulp laminate board faced with ivory wove (estimated) paper, prepared with a gray wash, with a decorative paper board collar gilt with silver leaf, in original frame works →All works by John Marin →