Sea, Green and Brown, Maine
<p>This unusually somber watercolor must have been painted indoors on a dark day or possibly at nightfall, when the sea appeared almost black. Marin captured this view from the glass porch of the Cape Split house at high tide, when the large triangular rock known as the tide marker was barely visible; the tip of a coastal ledge juts into the picture at the left. The artist here used directional wiping, blending in opaque watercolor. Movement and brightness were introduced by scraping away pigment to reveal the white paper, conjuring the breaking surf playing about the submerged rocks.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1937
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 38.7 × 53.4 cm (15 1/4 × 21 1/16 in.); Secondary support: 42.7 × 56.6 cm (16 13/16 × 22 5/16 in.); Mount: 50.3 × 64.3 cm (19 13/16 × 25 3/8 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
- 1937
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 38.7 × 53.4 cm (15 1/4 × 21 1/16 in.); Secondary support: 42.7 × 56.6 cm (16 13/16 × 22 5/16 in.); Mount: 50.3 × 64.3 cm (19 13/16 × 25 3/8 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1937-131490
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified
Explore
More Watercolor with wiping and scraping, and with opaque watercolor, over graphite, on medium-weight (estimated), moderately textured, ivory wove paper (all edges trimmed), laid down on wood-pulp board faced with ivory wove (estimated) paper, gilt with silver leaf, and backed with dark red wove paper, in original frame works →All works by John Marin →