John Marin
American, 1870-1953
Mills and Footbridge, Meaux
INV-2915
John Marin
American, 1870-19531908
Mills and Footbridge, Meaux
John Marin American, 1870-1953 →watercolordrawings (visual works)
Date
1908
Medium
Watercolor with touches of blotting, over traces of graphite, on lightweight, moderately textured, ivory wove paper, laid down on off-white wood-pulp laminate board
Dimensions
28.3 × 39.1 cm (11 3/16 × 15 7/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Marin made repeated trips to Meaux, an old mill town 25 miles northeast of Paris. Here dabs of diluted pink, red, and yellow suggest the movement of clouds, figures, and wind. Marin painted the sky with long, dry brushstrokes, then defined the clouds, working wet-into-wet by dripping in dilute washes of color that dispersed the pigment and yielded dark, feathered lines. After the washes dried, he punctuated the remaining white of the sky with yellow marks to add brightness. Demonstrating an intuitive understanding of how watercolor behaves, as well as a willingness to experiment with unpredictable results, Marin found such manipulations liberating. This was among the 25 watercolors shown at Stieglitz’s 291 in the spring of 1909, the first time the gallery owner exhibited Marin’s work.
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