Sailboat
<p>Noting Marin’s eye for watercraft, one contemporary critic went so far as to subtitle an article on the artist “Yachtsmen and Painters Alike Unite in Their Praise of Marin Sailboats.” Marin himself adopted the schooner image as a kind of personal talisman, incorporating it into his works in all media, including this simple yet striking 1932 etching. That the schooner motif took on a symbolic role for him is also suggested by the frequency with which he began enclosing it within drawn or painted boxes and borders, sometimes superimposing these like collaged decals onto larger compositions.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1932
- Dimensions
- Plate: 17.3 × 23.5 cm (6 13/16 × 9 5/16 in.); Sheet: 21.6 × 34.7 cm (8 9/16 × 13 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.
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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
- 1932
- Dimensions
- Plate: 17.3 × 23.5 cm (6 13/16 × 9 5/16 in.); Sheet: 21.6 × 34.7 cm (8 9/16 × 13 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1932-134388
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified