John Marin 1870-1953

The Downtown Gallery, New York
Private collection, Miami, Florida, circa 1950 (acquired from the above)
By descent in the family to the present owner

New York, The Downtown Gallery, John Marin, December 1950-January 1951

Art News, vol. XLIX, January 1951, p. 28, illustrated
Sheldon Reich, John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 2, Tucson, Arizona, 1970, no. 50.42, p. 786, illustrated

Very good condition; unlined, under UV: fine.
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John Marin's abstracted New York city-scapes capture the energy of the environment, rather than the specificity of the place.  New York Series: From Weehawken Heights, painted from Marin's New Jersey home, depicts the shore of Weehawken abutting the Hudson River with the New York City skyline in the distance.  Marin uses angular, dynamic brushstrokes to invigorate and abstract the surface, emphasizing its two dimensionality while the ship on the river and skyscrapers in the distance adhere to traditional landscape perspective.  However Kalus Kertess writes "Marin stopped short of abstraction, which he continued to consider self-indulgent....Not only did 'motif' remain important to him but also the boundaries of the canvas (Marin in Oil, 1987, p. 55).  Marin routinely painted and carved frames for his works on oil starting in the 1930's. Marin's frames "simultaneously reinforce the view inside and its resolution into objectness. The conventional frame's task of punctuating and isolating the view into the canvas is subverted with colors and configurations that relate to the painting and help pull it back into flatness" (Marin in Oil, p. 51).