Sea and Beach

John Marin (1870 - 1953)

John Marin, a leading American modernist, is best known for his views of Maine where he spent part of each year beginning in 1914.  Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, Marin received formal artistic training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts between 1899 and 1901, and moved to Europe in 1905 to further enrich his artistic education.  An introduction to Edward Steichen in Paris around 1908 secured Marin’s future success as an artist when Steichen saw and was duly impressed with the artist’s watercolors.  Steichen, in turn, introduced Marin to his business partner, Alfred Stieglitz, who promptly arranged for a show of these works to open the following spring at ‘291,’ his pioneering New York gallery.  Stieglitz became a devoted supporter of Marin’s work that he then presented at ‘291’ and his two succeeding galleries nearly every year for the next four decades.

In the early 1930s, Marin began working almost exclusively in oil and the first exhibition of these works – thirteen paintings depicting scenes of Maine – appeared in an exhibition at An American Place (Stieglitz’s second gallery) in October 1931.  One critic called the exhibition “a feast of uncommon beauty.”   Fourteen months later, the second exhibition of Marin’s oils opened at the gallery and included the present picture.  In a review of this exhibition, critic Lewis Mumford hailed Marin by noting that he “not merely demonstrates a mastery of the [oil] medium, but… he extends the range of his art by a couple of octaves.”  

Sea and Beach is a visually dynamic picture comprised of geometric forms that lead the viewer into the composition.  Alternately contrasting the solidity of land with the fluidity of the sea, Marin grounds the scene with the sandy beach in the foreground. Beyond this is a wedge of choppy water, proficiently conveyed with thick dabs of oil paint in varying shades of blue.  The sharply defined line of a spit of land interrupts the sea although it reappears just beyond, frothing with white foam.  Two islands, one at left and the other blocking the horizon force the water to the sides of the composition.  While Sea and Beach nears abstraction, Marin manipulates the paint through color, form, and texture, giving the viewer just enough clues to allow him to experience one of the artist’s favorite subjects.