In the summer of 1933, the Marin family moved their summer base to Cape Split, an isolated promontory near the town of Addison, Maine. The place must have felt right, for the following summer the artist purchased the Henry Prentiss House, perched above the rock ledges that overlook Pleasant Bay. His Cape Split paintings, both watercolors and oils, express a joyful and lyrical energy, as though Marin truly knew himself to be living "the painter man's dream."

The best feature of his Cape Split house was the glassed-in sun porch that ran along two sides. Marin could paint in all weather conditions while maintaining a feeling of immersion in his subject. "The house is so close to the water I almost feel at times that I am on a boat," he wrote. The artist's method blended the view in front of his eyes with his long-standing knowledge of the ocean environment. "For subject matter I don't go very far," he explained to Stieglitz. "I stick a boat in here and there from past Experience." Fittingly, when Marin died on October 1, 1953, he did so at his home, overlooking the endlessly fascinating waters of Pleasant Bay. Overflowing with love and inspiration, Marin had once written to Stieglitz from Cape Split:

It's been a beautiful world—it is a beautiful world—it's the only world we've known—Our work was done in this world—Our friends have been of this world—and we have fared moderately well and we have enjoyed the living moderately well with some Swell moments."

_{John Marin. Approaching Fog, 1952. Suzanne Searle Dixon Endowment, Olivia Shaler Swan Memorial Fund, William H. Tuthill Fund.}