Movement: Boats and Objects, Blue Gray Sea

John Marins Movement: Boats and Objects, Blue Gray Sea from 1947 is an oil painting from the final years of the artists career that demonstrates the continuing vitality of his engagement with the Maine coastline and the formal vocabulary he had developed over three decades of painting the sea. The title, with its emphasis on movement rather than place, signals Marins lifelong commitment to the dynamic rather than the static aspects of experience, and the boats and objects of the subtitle are rendered as elements in a kinetic composition rather than as subject matter for descriptive painting. The blue gray sea of the title dominates the canvas with a chromatic range that is both specific to the coast of Maine and abstract in its emphasis on the relationship between color patches rather than the description of water. The year 1947 places this painting in the period of Abstract Expressionisms ascendancy in New York, and Marins late paintings were both a precursor to and a contemporary of the new movement, sharing its emphasis on gesture and energy while maintaining the commitment to observation that distinguished his work from the purely abstract canvases of his younger colleagues. The oil on canvas medium, which Marin adopted for his larger and more ambitious compositions, provides a richer chromatic range and a more substantial surface than the watercolors for which he was better known, giving the painting a physical presence appropriate to its monumental scale.

Marins late oil paintings demonstrate that his engagement with the Maine coastline remained vital and innovative through the final years of his career, and their influence on the Abstract Expressionists who recognized in his work a precedent for their own integration of gesture and structure continues to be acknowledged.

A 1947 oil painting by Marin of boats and objects on a blue gray sea, maintaining his commitment to dynamic composition and observation in the year of Abstract Expressionisms ascendancy.