- 69
John Marin 1872 - 1953
Estimate
500,000 - 700,000 USD
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Description
- John Marin
- Yellow Sun, New York City
- signed Marin (lower right); also inscribed (Yellow Sun, New York City) c. 1934 18 x 14 on the reverse
- oil on canvasboard
- 17 3/4 by 13 3/4 inches
- (45.1 by 34.9 cm)
- Painted circa 1934.
Provenance
Estate of the artist
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York
Kennedy Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owners from the above, circa 1975
Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York
Kennedy Galleries, New York
Acquired by the present owners from the above, circa 1975
Exhibited
Addison, Maine, Cape Split Place, John Marin: The Etchings and Related Oils, Drawings and Watercolors, August-October 1980
Literature
Sheldon Reich, John Marin: Catalogue Raisonné, Tucson, Arizona, 1970, vol. II, no. 34.35, p. 666, illustrated
Catalogue Note
New York City was a favorite subject for John Marin, and one with which he engaged throughout his career. Closely associated with the avant-garde photographer and gallerist Alfred Stiglitz, Marin sought to explore explicitly national themes in his work and his intention was to establish a distinctly American style. His work focused on semi-abstract landscapes and cityscapes that were executed both as spontaneous plein air pieces and more carefully structured studio compositions. During the 1930s, Marin executed a group of New York City street scenes, in which he attempted to capture the city’s distinctive skyline of buildings and skyscrapers, its crowded streets and, most importantly, its palpable, dynamic energy.
In Yellow Sun, New York City, painted circa 1934, Marin’s rigorous style of execution enlivens a conventionally Cubist compositional structure while simultaneously expressing the vitality and frenzy that the artist observed as inherent to the metropolis. “Shall we consider the life of a great city as confined simply to the people and animals on its streets and in its buildings?” he explained of the vision with which he viewed the city. “Are the buildings themselves dead? We have been told somewhere that a work of art is a thing alive. You cannot create a work of art unless the things you behold respond to something within you. Therefore, if these buildings move me, they too must have life.
"Thus the whole city is alive; buildings, people, all are alive; and the more they move me, the more I feel them to be alive…I see great forces at work; great movements; the large buildings and the small buildings; the warring of the great and the small; influences of one mass on another greater or smaller mass…While these powers are at work pushing, pulling, sideways, downwards, upwards, I can hear the sound of their strife and there is great music being played. And so I try to express graphically what a great city is doing” (as cited in Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Washington, D.C., 2000, p. 129).
In Yellow Sun, New York City, painted circa 1934, Marin’s rigorous style of execution enlivens a conventionally Cubist compositional structure while simultaneously expressing the vitality and frenzy that the artist observed as inherent to the metropolis. “Shall we consider the life of a great city as confined simply to the people and animals on its streets and in its buildings?” he explained of the vision with which he viewed the city. “Are the buildings themselves dead? We have been told somewhere that a work of art is a thing alive. You cannot create a work of art unless the things you behold respond to something within you. Therefore, if these buildings move me, they too must have life.
"Thus the whole city is alive; buildings, people, all are alive; and the more they move me, the more I feel them to be alive…I see great forces at work; great movements; the large buildings and the small buildings; the warring of the great and the small; influences of one mass on another greater or smaller mass…While these powers are at work pushing, pulling, sideways, downwards, upwards, I can hear the sound of their strife and there is great music being played. And so I try to express graphically what a great city is doing” (as cited in Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Washington, D.C., 2000, p. 129).