Description
Marin painted this watercolor in the fall of 1916, while staying at Echo Lake, Pennsylvania, near the Delaware Water Gap. He worked so vigorously that bristles from his brush remain embedded in the paint. Experimenting with subtractive techniques, he gave the resulting marks a prominence equal to that of a brushstroke. Repeatedly rewetting some passages, he used extensive blotting and scrubbing to create ghostly effects that conjure nature’s fleeting changes.
Provenance
Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), New York [stamped twice, lower right, in purple: "COLLECTION / AS"]; Stieglitz Estate (Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986), executor); given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1956.
Accession Number
2921
Medium
Watercolor with rewetting, blotting, wiping, and scraping, on moderately thick, rough, off-white wove paper (all edges trimmed)
Dimensions
41.9 × 49 cm (16 1/2 × 19 5/16 in.)
Classification
watercolor
Credit Line
Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Background & Context
Background Story
John Marin's Tree and Mountain Forms, Delaware River Country (1916) is a watercolor with rewetting, blotting, wiping, and scraping on moderately thick off-white wove paper. This work shows Marin turning from the urban subjects of his earlier career to the landscape of rural Pennsylvania and New York. The Delaware River Country, with its forests, hills, and river valleys, provided Marin with a new range of subjects. The watercolor technique is characteristically expressive, the rewetting, blotting, wiping, and scraping creating a rich surface of varied textures that captures the feeling of the landscape. The tree and mountain forms are rendered not with topographical precision but as expressive shapes that convey the energy and vitality of the natural world. This work from 1916 shows Marin's style evolving from the urban dynamism of his earlier watercolors toward a more lyrical engagement with the landscape that would characterize his later work.
Cultural Impact
Marin's landscape watercolors of the 1910s extended his modernist vision to the natural world, finding the same energy and vitality in forests and mountains that he had found in the city.
Why It Matters
This watercolor of tree and mountain forms captures the vitality of the natural landscape, Marin's experimental techniques creating a surface that seems to pulse with the energy of the living world.
