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dated "Marin 27" (lower right) watercolor, gouache and charcoal on paper 26 3/8 x 21 1/4 in. (67 x 54 cm) Provenance Estate of the artist Mr. and Mrs. John Marin, Jr., New York Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland, 1981 Exhibited Boston, Institute of Modern Art; Washington, D.C., Phillips Memorial Art Gallery; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, John Marin: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1947, no. 34 New York, The Downtown Gallery, Paintings and Drawings by John Marin: New York 1910-1944, August 10-September 8, 1948, no. 15 Evanston, IlLinois, Terra Museum of American Art, Five American Masters of Watercolor, May 5-July 12, 1981 (illustrated) New York, Kennedy Galleries, Inc., John Marin~dq~s New York, October 13-November 6, 1981, no. 30 Rome, Musei Vaticani; Lugano, Villa Malpensata, Maestri Americani della Collezione Thyssen-Bornemisza, 1983-1984, no. 69 and 67 respectively (illustrated) Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art; Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts; Denver, The Denver Art Museum; San Antonio, Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute; New York, IBM Gallery of Arts and Sciences; San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art; Palm Beach, The Society of the Four Arts, American Masters: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, October 28, 1984-April 13, 1986, no. 68 (illustrated) Luxembourg, Villa Vauban, Munchen, Haus der Kunst; Wien, Museum des 20 Jahrhunderts, Wege zur Abstraktion, 80 Meisterwerks aus der Sammlung Thyssen-Bornemisza, 1988-1989, no. 52 (color pl., p. 127) Literature Sheldon Reich, John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné, Tucson, 1970, p. 583, no. 27.35 (as New York Series) Mahonri Sharp Young, "Scope and Catholicity: Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century American Painting," Apollo, CXVII, 1983, p. 88 (illustrated) John I. H. Baur, "Introduction," John Marin~dq~s New York, Kennedy Galleries, Inc.,1981, n.p. Gail Levin, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Twentieth-Century American Painting, London, 1987, p. 124, no. 34 (illustrated, p. 125) New York in the first two decades of the twentieth century was a paradigm of modernity. Marin, who had worked in an architect~dq~s office when he was in his twenties, delighted in studying the structure of some of the world~dq~s most technologically advanced buildings and bridges going up at a rapid pace throughout lower Manhattan. But he also saw their lyric beauty. To him, there was as much interest and beauty in the urban scene as in some of the most idyllic landscapes of New England, also a favorite subject for the artist. Despite a centuries-old bias for paintings in oil, Marin persevered in his love of the watercolor medium. He even chose to be represented by watercolors-images of New York~dq~s newly completed Woolworth Building-in the legendary Armory Show of 1913. By the time Marin painted New York in 1927, he had captured many of the city~dq~s iconic features-the Brooklyn Bridge, the famous skyscrapers, the churches and ferryboats-in his energetic and expressionistic watercolors. In this work, Marin pays homage not to a well-known landmark, but rather to the everyday hustle and visual congestion that can be found on many of the city~dq~s streets. Here, buildings appear stacked on top of one another, with just a few slivers of sky and a lone tree fighting to survive amidst the tumble of the dynamic cityscape. While the central blue-gray building appears fixed, the others appear to push and pull against it. Objects are skewed and dislocated on tilted axes, bracketed by the frame-within-a-frame device that Marin began to use in the early 1920s. Diagonal lines, the juxtaposition of darks and lights, and the jagged outer border all contribute to the mood of the scene. Marin once mused, "Shall we consider the life of a great city as confined simply to the people and animals on its streets and in its buildings? Are the buildings themselves dead?...I see great forces at work: great movements; the large buildings and the small buildings; the warring of the great and the small...." We are grateful to Beth Venn for cataloguing this lot.