West Forty-Second Street from Ferryboat
<p>Marin’s interest in internal framing devices became increasingly significant in his watercolors of the 1920s. This large sheet, much admired and exhibited during the artist’s lifetime, captures the waterfront through a window on the Weehawken Ferry. Marin painted the upper edge to resemble a rolled canvas window covering, employing a playful trompe l’oeil manner. Equally improvisational is the artist’s inclusion of a pink mountain range beyond the New York skyline, which equates nature’s grand peaks and valleys with the soaring towers and narrow canyons of the urban landscape.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1929
- Dimensions
- 54.9 × 66.3 cm (21 5/8 × 26 1/8 in.); Secondary support: 58.3 × 75.3 cm (23 × 29 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
- 1929
- Dimensions
- 54.9 × 66.3 cm (21 5/8 × 26 1/8 in.); Secondary support: 58.3 × 75.3 cm (23 × 29 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1929-131283
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified
Explore
More Watercolor with wiping, blotting, and scraping, and with black colored pencil, black crayon, and graphite, on moderately thick (estimated), slightly textured, ivory wove paper (all edges trimmed) perimeter mounted to wood-pulp board faced with cream wove paper, in original frame works →All works by John Marin →