Circus Elephants
<p>Among Marin’s favorite subjects in the 1930s and 1940s was the circus, a theme he worked on both in the city and at Cape Split. An avid circus visitor, he enjoyed the spectacle and sketching the animals. Marin loved the elephants most, responding to the dignity and grandeur of their movements. He began this watercolor by drawing the creatures and their surroundings with graphite and crayon. He then painted the forms with transparent watercolor, returning to add black crayon for the deepest lines. Painted, drawn, and subtracted diagonal marks conjure the effect of spotlights. The soft effect of wiping also contributes to the overall impression of dust hanging in the illuminated air, enhancing the artist’s evocation of heat, smells, and sounds.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1941
- Dimensions
- 48.9 × 63 cm (19 5/16 × 24 13/16 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
Movement: Sky and Grey Sea
1941 · Watercolor, charcoal, and pencil on paper
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
Nudes in Sea
1940 · Watercolor with blotting, wiping, and scraping, and black crayon, with brown colored pencil, on heavyweight, moderately textured, ivory wove paper (all edges trimmed), in original frame
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- John Marin
- Year
- 1941
- Dimensions
- 48.9 × 63 cm (19 5/16 × 24 13/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1941-070077
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified