Movement No 24–Pertaining to Deer Isle–The Road

Prints and Drawings

1927

John Marin
American, 1870-1953

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.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: John Marin
Title: Movement No 24–Pertaining to Deer Isle–The Road
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1927
Medium: 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
Inscriptions: Signed and dated lower right corner, in brush and red watercolor: "Marin 27"
Dimensions: 36 × 44.8 cm (14 3/16 × 17 11/16 in.)
Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection
Reference Number: 1949.567
Copyright: © 2018 Estate of John Marin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

American Art Research Council, no. 123-X
Sheldon Reich, John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné II (Tucson, Ariz., 1970), p. 581, no. 27.25 (ill).

New York, The Intimate Gallery, “John Marin,” Nov.–Dec. 1928, cat. 24.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, “John Marin,” 1936, p. 72, cat. 91.
Art Institute of Chicago, “John Marin’s Watercolors: A Medium for Modernism,” Jan. 19-Apr. 17, 2011, pp. 54-55, 70-71, 75, 156-57, figs. 41, 58a & 58c, pl. 78; traveled to the High Museum, Atlanta, June 26-Sept. 11, 2011.

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), New York; Stieglitz Estate (Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), executor); given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1949.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.