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John Marin
American, 1870-1953
Movement No 24–Pertaining to Deer Isle–The Road, 1927
Watercolor, with black colored pencil and black crayon, on moderately thick (estimated), slightly textured, ivory wove paper (all edges trimmed), laid down on wood-pulp laminate board faced with ivory wove (estimated) paper, prepared with a gray wash, with a decorative paper board collar gilt with silver leaf, in original frame
360 x 448 mm
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949.567
Marin described Deer Isle as “a place of lovely spots and bad spots.” The joyful coloring here suggests that he delighted in this scene. Telephone poles dance over the rise alongside a zigzagging road, illustrating the artist’s consciousness of “the wonderful everlasting road a leading onward a dipping a rising a leading up over the hill to the sea beyond.” Two important variations in Marin’s approach to mounting and framing can be seen in this and the adjacent watercolor. He eschewed the gilded mounts he had previously favored, instead applying a very thin silver strip around the edge of the sheet and toning the outer margin with a coordinating watercolor wash.
— Exhibition label, John Marin's Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism, January 19-April 17, 2011, Galleries 124-127.
