John Marin 1870 - 1953

Every summer from 1914 until his death, Marin traveled to Maine where he delighted in the vitality and austere beauty of the coastline. In 1934, Marin purchased a house on Cape Split in Addison, Maine, perched some twenty-five feet from the ocean, giving him complete access to paint the vast coastal landscape. The ruggedness of nature invigorated Marin who wrote, "Seems to me the true artist must perforce from time to time to the elemental big forms – Sky, Sea, Mountain, Plain – and those things pertaining thereto, to sort of re-true himself up, to recharge the battery. For these big forms have everything. But to express these, you have to love these, to be a part of these in sympathy. One doesn't get very far without this love" ("John Marin by Himself," Creative Art, 1928, p. 127). In Sea and Gulls, Marin emphasizes the expressive potential of form by fracturing the composition into planes amid line. Using bold brushstrokes and angular tension between directional forces, he records the energy of the sea and the birds. White rectangular boxes in the upper register of the sky hover above the sea like clouds, while slashes of black frame a gull in flight. Later in life, Marin mused, "I don't have to see the ocean anymore to paint. I've been looking at it so long I can see it with my eyes closed. And so I try to put it on canvas as I see it, the colors and the movement as it appears to me. I'm not interested in how other artists paint the sea. I paint it as I see it" (Ruth Fine, John Marin, Washington, D.C., 1990, p. 247).