The multiple peaks of Tunk Mountain, located near John Marin’s summer home on Cape Split, Maine, were among his favorite landscape subjects during the last phase of his career. He painted them repeatedly in both oil and watercolor between 1939 and 1952, the year before his death. This small oil sketch has the hallmarks of Marin’s late style: expressive calligraphic lines that convey a sense of rhythm and motion, a reduced color palette, and the prominent role of the off-white ground layer.
Overview
Entry
John Marin painted this small oil sketch in 1948, the year Look magazine pronounced him America’s “Artist No. 1” and he was at the pinnacle of his fame.
This oil sketch was completed in the same year as the larger, more complex, and more colorful Tunk Mountains, Maine
Robert Torchia
July 24, 2024
Inscription
lower right: Marin 48; across upper center reverse: (Tunk Mountains, Maine) 1948 / oil on canvas board 14 x 18 / SR 48.38; upper right reverse: NBM 2/21/84
Provenance
The artist [1870-1953]; his estate; by inheritance to his son, John C. Marin, Jr. [1914-1988], Cape Split, Maine; gift 1986 to NGA.
Exhibition History
- 1998
- American Light: Selections from the National Gallery of Art, Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, May-August 1998, no catalogue.
- 1998
- Treasures of Light: Paintings from the National Gallery of Art, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, March-April 1998, no catalogue.
Technical Summary
The support consists of an artist’s board faced with a plain-weave fabric commercially prepared with an off-white ground; it retains the manufacturer’s label that identifies it as the product of The Palette Art Co., 436 Madison Ave., New York. The artist applied paint in a series of narrow black sketch lines (some may have been applied with a stick), with scumbles of opaque paint in the distant mountains and in the pink foreground. The painting is in very good condition. Grime has accumulated on the unvarnished surface.
Michael Swicklik
July 24, 2024
Bibliography
- 1970
- Reich, Sheldon. John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné. Tucson, 1970: no. 48.38.
- 1992
- American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 233, repro.
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