Buildings, One with Tower

Description

Here Marin positioned himself looking south on Broadway toward Saint Paul’s Chapel and the Singer Building. He abandoned his earlier staccato, dotted application of color; instead, he chose a paper of heavier weight and texture and used more water, forsaking any preliminary graphite guide and allowing his washes to bleed into one another as in the Tyrol watercolors painted in the summer of 1910. Marin’s encounters with modern New York were intensified by his discussions about art with Stieglitz at 291. There he became acquainted not only with Stieglitz’s atmospheric photographs, but also with those of Edward Steichen and others in their circle whose emotive pictures of clouds, rain, snow, and steam encouraged him to pay attention to observation under different environmental conditions, as explored in this sheet.

Provenance

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), New York; Stieglitz Estate (Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986), executor); given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1956.

Buildings, One with Tower

John Marin

1910

Accession Number

2926

Medium

Watercolor with blotting and scraping, over graphite, on medium-weight, moderately textured, ivory wove paper (all edges trimmed), laid down on wood-pulp laminate board

Dimensions

53.3 × 35.7 cm (21 × 14 1/16 in.)

Classification

watercolor

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Background & Context

Background Story

John Marin's Buildings, One with Tower (1910) is a watercolor with blotting and scraping over graphite on medium-weight ivory wove paper. This watercolor focuses on a group of buildings, one of which features a tower that rises above the others. The tower provides a vertical accent that organizes the composition. Marin's handling is characteristically bold and free, the watercolor washes building the forms of the buildings with expressive energy. The blotting and scraping techniques create varied textures that capture the sense of urban life. The graphite underdrawing provides a structural foundation. This watercolor belongs to Marin's remarkable series of 1910, the year when he produced the works that established his reputation as the leading American watercolorist. The building with a tower may represent a specific New York structure, but Marin's treatment transforms it into a universal symbol of urban aspiration and energy.

Cultural Impact

Marin's tower studies capture the vertical aspiration of American architecture, finding in the skyscraper and the church tower a symbol of the energy and ambition of the modern city.

Why It Matters

This watercolor of buildings with a tower captures the vertical energy of the urban landscape, Marin's expressive technique transforming architecture into a vision of aspiration and vitality.