(fig. 1) is a key turning point. The purpose of
this article is to investigate whether Marin’s
background as a practising architect and the
influence from modern photography have
affected his artistic development; these are
areas which have only been sporadically
studied hitherto.
The reason for Marin’s background as an
architect being relatively overlooked can
partly be ascribed to his own neglect of this
period of his life, and partly to a lack of
documentation of his work as an architect.
Marin’s artistic production is primarily
watercolours and graphics, but he had a past
as a practising architect before he became an
artist. In 1886, encouraged by his father, he
enrolled at a technical university, where he
completed half a year’s study. Afterwards, he
worked in different drawing offices until he
worked as an independent architect between
1892 and 1897. It was not until a couple of
years later, in 1899 at the age of 28, that he
enrolled at the academy of arts in Philadelphia, where he continued until 1901.2
The meeting between three men
– Seligmann, Stieglitz and Marin
Brooklyn Bridge and the Urban Landscape – Breakthrough in
John Marin’s graphic art
by inger krog
J
ohn Marin (1870-1953) is considered
to be a central figure among American
modernists, honoured with
comprehensive retrospectives at the most
renowned American museums and besides
singled out as an artist who paved the way for
the later Abstract Expressionists.1 In 2004,
the Department of Prints and Drawings at
Statens Museum for Kunst received ten
graphic sheets and seven watercolours by
John Marin, thanks to a testamentary gift of
Herbert J. Seligmann and his wife Lise Rueff
Seligmann.
John Marin’s graphic production depicting
city architecture will be the crux of this
113 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n
article. The graphic works demonstrate the
artistic freedom which Marin’s art acquired in
the years around 1910, when he returned
home from his stay in Europe and settled
down in New York. This liberation was
abetted by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and
his support for modern art. His friendship
with Stieglitz is a well-documented chapter
in Marin’s artistic career, which this article
will present and problematise by way of
introduction. Thereafter, Marin’s graphics
breakthrough will be exemplified with works
from the pictorialistic and atmospheric, to
the modernistic and dynamic, where a motif
such as Brooklyn Bridge, No. 6 (Swaying)
In 2004, Statens Museum for Kunst as
mentioned above received as a donation
Herbert J. Seligmann’s private art collection
of prominent American artists from the
beginning of the 20th century. Until this
time, American Modernism had not been
represented in the collection, but this
changed when the museum received works
by Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Georgia
O’Keefe (1887-1986), Marsden Hartley
(1877-1943), Arthur G. Dove (1880-1946),
among others – and, of course, John Marin.
The explanation for it being this particular
group of artists Seligmann had collected lay
in his personal acquaintance with Alfred
Stieglitz and the contact that he acquired
through him to these artists, who were shown
in Stieglitz’ galleries in New York.
The legacy of Seligmann and his wife
contained 61 works all told, including
paintings, graphics and photography. Over
and above these works there was a large
quantity of archival material that was
donated to the museum, containing, among
other things, Seligmann’s private
photographs. He was a dedicated amateur
photographer, as one can see in the two
portraits showing respectively Stieglitz in a
white overall (fig. 2) and Marin bowed
forward with sunlight on his folded hands
(fig. 3). In a corresponding portrait
photograph, Stieglitz has captured a
comparatively young Seligmann, presumably
from the same period as the two preceding
photographs (fig. 4).
The personal friendship between
Seligmann and Stieglitz was initiated by
Seligmann’s visit to the gallery 291. Here he
was fascinated by the charismatic Stieglitz,
and he has later related vividly about
Stieglitz’ ability to gather a group of artists
and art lovers around him to discuss modern
art and its conditions in contemporary
America.3 Seligmann himself became a
regular guest in the circle around Stieglitz,
and at his request he edited Letters of John
Marin (New York 1931), which is a collection
of Marin’s private correspondence with
Stieglitz. In the introduction to the book,
Seligmann touches on the relationship
between Marin and Stieglitz: ”During the
progress of this long sustained laboratory of
art and life, which may be said to have come
to focus in Marin, he wrote a series of letters
to the man, his friend, who made the entire
evolution possible.”4 Seligmann hereby
emphasises uncritically the decisive
importance Stieglitz had for Marin’s artistic
development.
A mythologised friendship
In the years between 1905 and 1910, Marin
was in Paris again. According to what he
said, and with his typical distance from any
attempt to intellectualise himself, he played
a lot of billiards with the other American
artists who had travelled to the European art
mecca.5 In this coterie he was introduced to
Edward Steichen (1879-1973), who wrote
enthusiastic letters home to New York, telling
Stieglitz about Marin’s artistic abilities.
Steichen, himself a painter and
photographer, had helped Stieglitz open the
gallery The Little Galleries of the PhotoSecession at 291, Fifth Avenue in New York
in 1905. With the aid of Steichen as gobetween, the first exhibition on American soil
of John Marin’s works was arranged here in
spring, 1909.6 In the autumn of the same
year, Stieglitz went to Paris and met Marin in
person, which was to be the start of a lifelong friendship.
This meeting and Stieglitz’ later
importance for Marin’s artistic development
can be followed in Stieglitz’ own memoirs
and statements. Seligmann has immortalised
these statements in the notes and
observations he himself made during his
innumerable visits to Stieglitz’ gallery. He
wrote down the anecdotal happenings which
took place here and industriously quoted
Stieglitz; all this was later published in the
book with the simple title, Alfred Stieglitz
Talking (New Haven 1966).7 Here is the
account of Stieglitz’ first meeting with
Marin’s art at the gallery in New York in
1909, where Stieglitz remembers that his
first impression of Marin’s etchings was
James McNeill Whistler’s (1834-1903)
influence on them, that is, a retrospective
picturesque tradition. Later when he visited
Marin in his studio in Paris, he saw quite
different etchings from his hand. We do not
know what etchings they may have been, but
in all likelihood they were etchings in which
Marin experimented with freer and more
sharply drawn lines with the etching needle
than the earlier, more delicately executed
ones. In this connection, Marin refers to his
art-dealers in the USA, who had advised him
against experimenting with new etchings if
he hoped to sell his work. Stieglitz’ reaction
came immediately: ‘Well, if I were you and
could do what you have done, (…) I’d tell the
dealer and your father to go to hell.’8 From
this point, Stieglitz assumed a father role for
Marin.9 As early as in 1910, when Marin
returned to the USA again, Stieglitz arranged
his first one-man show at 291, and he
continued to ensure that Marin had his works
exhibited, even in the periods when Stieglitz
did not have his own gallery.10
By virtue of his role as gallery owner and
debater on art, Stieglitz fought for the
recognition of contemporary American artists
who were absorbed in developing a
modernistic idiom. Seligmann emphasized
that all galleries run by Stieglitz had the
same purpose: ”Each of these centers was
animated by the same motive: to bring about
opportunity for the creative artist to work in
America.”11 The concept ”creative” in this
context must be seen in relation to Stieglitz’
view of art, which was influenced by a direct
connection between creativity and freedom.
This statement of values involved on the one
hand a distancing from the academic
tradition, and on the other emphasised the
development of a more abstracted idiom; this
involved, among other things, that the
expressiveness of line became independent
of the purely descriptive approach to the
motif. How this value statement found its
expression can be implicitly read in the story
of Marin as the unfree artist, subjugated to
commercial demands, who is liberated
through the moral support of Stieglitz. There
is a sort of myth describing the relationship
between the two men, which has been
strengthened through repetition, saying that
Marin gained a better foundation for
developing away from the picturesque and
towards the more modernistic idiom, due to
Stieglitz’ support.12 However, this story
leaves the question unanswered as to
whether Marin’s artistic liberation would not
have taken place, seen in the light of his
ongoing work with his ‘new’ etchings, when
Stieglitz visited his studio. As Marin himself
remembered this stage of his career:
”Some of the etchings I had been making
before Stieglitz showed my work already had
some freedom about them. I had already
begun to let go some. After he began to show
my work I let go more, of course. But, in the
water colours I had been making, even before
Stieglitz saw my work, I had already begun to
let go in complete freedom.”13
This statement underlines the fact that Marin
acknowledged Stieglitz’ importance as
regards his artistic development, but also
that he was already in the process of
experimenting with his own mode of
expression during his stay in Paris. Marin had
clearly been influenced by what was going on
around him in the art milieu. Despite him
playing down the influence of French PostImpressionism and early Cubism, it is of
course an unlikely thesis that he existed in
an artistic vacuum.14
For Stieglitz, Marin became the
personification of the American artist myth,
in which the artist is described as a
”frontiersman” conquering new territory.15
Seligmann describes it like this in a more
thoughtful essay: ”For Stieglitz, Marin, as he
grew, became more and more a symbol. In
himself, Marin was the true, joyous, and
simple human being, whom it became a
necessity to enable to live, as a flower is
cared for, or a tree bearing fruit. He
represented, too, all artists, purity of spirit
and mastery itself, in America.”16 The
mythologizing tale of Stieglitz’ importance for
Marin’s breakthrough is therefore twofold. On
the one hand, there is no doubt that the
financial and moral support that Stieglitz
gave Marin over a period of years was an
inestimable help to his artistic career. On the
e n g l i s h v e r s i o n 114
other hand Marin, as a free American artist,
was living proof of Stieglitz’ decisive role as
cultural innovator and patron of the arts. This
finds clear expression in Seligmann’s record
of Stieglitz’ words: ”Here (…) was Marin,
who had been able to stay a pure and free
spirit. If he, Stieglitz, had not been there, he
wondered if that would have been
possible.”17 Marin’s artistic liberation
became an important point in Stieglitz’ great
account of American Modernism, but, as the
following presentation of selected graphic
works by Marin will demonstrate, there are
certain aspects that this account has
overlooked.
The pictorialistic point of departure
Shortly before Marin travelled to Europe in
1905, he purchased a handbook on the
technique of etching: Maxime Lalanne,
Treatise on Etching (Boston 1880), and
made his first experiments in Paris for the
first time with an etching needle.18 From the
very first year, the main thread of Marin’s
work was the city and its architecture; he
depicted in picturesque views the less
monumental sides of the European cities he
visited: an old house with peeling walls, a
narrow alleyway or a bridge over a canal. He
found the latter in Amsterdam, where he
stayed in 1906. In his etching Bridge over
Canal, Amsterdam, 1906 (fig. 5), Marin
experimented with the artistic properties of
the graphic medium. The grey tones of the
etching have been produced by not
completely wiping off the whole plate after
an etched metal plate has been inked – only
the light sections. In this way, the print gains
the characteristics of a monotype, as the
word itself denotes – a single print from a
plate which is changed for each inking. Marin
achieved a painterly effect from the ink,
which not only manifests itself in the etched
lines of the plate, but also disseminates itself
like a sort of watercolour. The technique
blurs the graphic line and gathers the motif
in a central composition with the aid of the
graduated tone, which darkens towards the
edge of the picture. The composition is built
up with the half-wall separating the
pavement from the canal. The perspective of
the half-wall accentuates it as a striking
white area reaching inwards and continuing
in the darkly accentuated curve of the bridge.
The picture is thus divided into two-thirds
given over to the tremor of the canal water,
and a third to the pavement. Across the
115 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n
bridge, a throng of unidentifiable figures can
be seen, and the buildings in the background
are only hinted at in faintly sketched
contours. The motif is unusual for Marin’s
early graphic work, in that it does not have
the architectural space as its primary focus.
Instead the atmosphere outside the
architectonic space comes into its own by
way of the reflections of light on the surface
of the water. The influence of contemporary
picturesque photography can have been a
decisive factor in his choice of both
technique and composition.
Pictorialism arose within photography at
the end of the 19th century, primarily in
England and America as a reaction to the
lack of recognition of the photographic
medium as artistic expression. The
discussion of the mechanical nature of
photography contra its aesthetic qualities was
at its highest, and photographers
experimented with dark room manipulations
of a very difficult nature, which were to
accentuate the painterly qualities of the
medium. The formal effects were compared
to those of paintings, and the content should
not be inferior to symbolism’s representation
of a subjective metaphysical dimension.
Edward Steichen was a strong exponent of
the movement, who formed the PhotoSecession group with Arthur Stieglitz in
1902, inspired by artistic groups in Europe.
With Stieglitz as a driving force, exhibitions
were arranged, and the periodical Camera
Work came out in the years between 1903
and 1917.
Like other American pictorialists,
Steichen’s works were inspired by his fellow
countryman James McNeill Whistler and his
tonal paintings from London, among others.
With Whistler, light, colour and atmosphere
were the real motif; the so-called nocturnal
motifs from the 1870s with their night-time
depictions of the Thames and its quiet water
are well-known examples of this.19 Whistler’s
influence can be traced in both Stieglitz and
Steichen in their well-known photographs of
the Flatiron skyscraper from 1902 and 1904
respectively, in which one of New York’s
monumental landmarks fades into the
background or is dematerialised in the
evening light.20 Whistler, or maybe more the
pictorialists’ interpretation of him, has had
an importance which is especially obvious in
Bridge over Canal, Amsterdam. The overtly
painterly treatment of the motif differs from
other etchings by Marin, particularly as
regards the centralisation of the motif about
the light areas and the atmospheric unity the
grey tones create. The dark tone towards the
edge of the picture gives the etching a
nocturnal atmosphere. It is impossible to say
how much Marin knew about pictorialist
photography. It is reasonable to suppose,
however, that Marin had had an opportunity
to follow the publication of Camera Work
through his American acquaintances in Paris,
like Steichen, for example. In the first
numbers of the periodical which was
published quarterly, the pictorialist
photographs of Steichen, Stieglitz and Alvin
Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) were strongly
represented. For example, the two
photographs of Flatiron were published in
this period as well as several motifs by Alvin
Langdon Coburn, with bridges fading into the
soft atmospheric light.21 One pictorialist
photograph which should be called attention
to because of its formal similarities with
Marin’s etchings is Steichen’s photogravure
Moonlight. The Pond from 1904, published
in Camera Work in April, 1906 (fig. 6). Here
one can see how the light and its reflections
in the water become the central motif,
gathering the composition in a dark-toned
unity. The high horizontal line which leaves
two thirds of the picture to the surface of the
water is also similar to Marin’s characteristic
form of composition, where tree trunks over
the pond stand like silhouettes in the same
way as Marin’s human figures hurrying across
the bridge.
A completely different side of Whistler’s
influence on Marin’s graphic production is
apparent in the more typical etchings by
Marin of this period. Whistler made several
graphic series of picturesque depictions of
cities like London and Venice. His series The
Thames Set from 1871 with motifs of life
along the banks of the Thames became very
popular, just like the series Etchings of
Venice from 1880, which shows less wellknown sides of the dilapidated city. The
etching Old House, Quai d’Ivry, 1906 (fig.
7), is an example of how Whistler’s influence
affected Marin’s choice of motifs, which did
not make him any different from other
graphic artists of the time.22 The old house
with its peeling walls and the boat in the
foreground hints at the dilapidated and
mundane, without it being spelled out into
the banal. Marin’s vibrating line gives the
house a special character, like a
personification of an old friend. This is
emphasised by the chosen point of view as a
two-point perspective, accentuating the
three-dimensionality of the house. This type
of etching, which depicts personified
architecture, can be seen as a form of
replacement for the very rare portraits Marin
made during his career. Instead of focusing
on the depiction of the human psyche
through studies of the facial features and
postures of the persons portrayed, Marin
reproduces windows, walls and volume, as
can be clearly seen in this case, with a sense
for the individuality and aging process of the
building. The sensitive depiction of the decay
of the architecture points to the nostalgic tones
which are also visible in Whistler’s etching.
The first expressive steps
In 1908, Marin turned to depiction of
architecture of a purely commercial nature.
As a commission he produced a series of
monumental sights in Paris, like the opera
and Notre Dame, the Madeleine and Saint
Sulpice churches.23 All these etchings were
made on plates that were far larger than the
small formats Marin was normally used to.
Marin’s background as a practising architect
must have been a great help in his approach
to these more traditional renderings of
building bodies, which have the appearance
of elevations. As mentioned above, Marin
worked as an architect from about 1892 to
1897. This is a period about which Marin
has not been particularly forthcoming, but
which may nevertheless have contributed to
strengthening both his interest in
architecture as a motif, as well as his ability
to understand and thereby reproduce
architectonic construction. As an artistic
colleague Marsden Hartley expressed it, ”And
it must not be forgotten that he began life as
an architectural draughtsman, and that his
earlier etchings of the Madeleine and like
subjects in Paris show that (…) he (…)
knows the meaning of architectural
construction, and applies the principle to
every wash he lays down.”24
Despite the traditional nature of the
motifs as tourist souvenirs, Marin’s are
different from other commercial etchings of
the time because of his vigorous touch with
the etching needle, denoting the movement
of clouds above the church towers. The
forceful lines are laid down rhythmically and
show the first steps towards a freer approach
to the medium. Thus one finds the beginnings
of the expressive style in Marin’s etchings
from 1909, which were later to be fully
integrated in his treatment of the whole motif.
New York and Brooklyn Bridge
Revisited
In the years directly after his return to New
York, the stylistic breakthrough which had
such decisive importance for Marin’s
development as a graphic artist occurred.
One of the reasons for the full-blown change
of style that finally manifested itself can have
been the meeting with the American metropolis. After several years in Europe, New York
and its skyscrapers which so radically altered
the silhouette of the city must have felt like
travelling from the retrospective and
traditionalist to the progressive and modern.
From the old world to the new. Edifices like
the Woolworth building from 1911-13 shot
up with the ambition of being the tallest
building in the world, with its 59 floors and
in all 241 meters.25 And Brooklyn Bridge,
opened in 1883, became a symbol of the
new advances within construction technique,
where iron became the crucial factor as a
new building material.
In 1911 and again in 1913, Marin
executed a series of etchings with Brooklyn
Bridge as the motif. It is here that the radical
development in Marin’s graphic production is
synthesised; this was incipient during the
last years in Paris. Brooklyn Bridge, No. 6
(Swaying), 1913 (fig. 1). is one example of
how Marin accomplishes the rhythmical
measure, which can be compared to his
written language and its stream-ofconsciousnessness, as can for example be
found in his description of how the artist
tunes into the frequence of modernity:
”The life of today so keyed up, so seen, so
seeming unreal yet so real and the eye with
so much to see and the ear to hear. Things
happening most weirdly upside down, that
it’s all – what is it? But the seeing eye and
the hearing ear become attuned. Then comes
expression:
taut, taut
loose and taut
electric
staccato.”
The staccato rhythm of the language can be
recognised in the sharply drawn lines leading
out of Brooklyn Bridge with its characteristic
Gothic pointed arches. The sloping lines are
applied in a zigzag pattern along the left side
and with the crosses on both sides of the
bridge create a dynamism that activates the
architecture of the bridge. The crosses
denote the pull of the cables under tension,
which are an important part of the bearing
structure of the bridge. The highly
foreshortened perspective seen from the left
side of the bridge accentuates the movement
of the curved lines disappearing through the
pointed arches. The big city’s tempo and
speed and the concomitant evanescence in
the motif of traffic across the bridge is
suggested through the open contour lines, as
well as by a figure caught in rapid movement
on its way across the bridge.
The rendition of the tectonics of the
bridge is seen from an architect’s
perspective. It is, however, represented in a
modernistically abstracted and strongly
gesticulating idiom, which has a different
fragmentary view of architecture than that of
the large traditional pictures of façade
elevations from Paris. As earlier mentioned,
this can partly be explained by his meeting
with the pulsating New York, but another
important reason can have been the
influence of the photographers whom Marin
met after his return to New York.
In a letter to Stieglitz dated New York,
11th October 1910, Marin wrote the
following: ”As you have no doubt been told
by Haviland, the skyscrapers struck a snag,
for the present at least; so we had to push in
a new direction. Haviland, Steichen and
Carles saw the new direction, and may be a
step forward. Let us hope so.”26 The
Haviland Marin refers to is Paul B. Haviland
(1880-1950), of whom he became a close
friend. Haviland was a photographer and in
April 1914 published two city pictures of
New York in Camera Work, with the roofs of
the city shown in a slanting bird’s eye view,
accentuating the abstract pattern of the
diagonal lines which the city streets cut
through the mass of the architecture.27 The
photographer’s approach to the city as motif
prepared the way for Marin, as he describes
it himself. This is not to say that it was a
direct transfer from photography to Marin’s
approach to the graphic medium, but rather a
gradual acquisition of a new aesthetic.
Haviland, Stieglitz and, last but by no
means least, Paul Strand (1890-1976)
played a decisive role, in this connection, in
the development of modernistic photography
characterised by diagonals and fragmented
motifs. Strand’s photographs developed
e n g l i s h v e r s i o n 116
particularly markedly in these years, with city
pictures from New York characterised by a
snapshot aesthetic, in which the abrupt
cutting-off of passers-by in the city scene
indicate the fleeting nature of the motif. The
lines and shadows of the architecture are
used compositionally to emphasise
dynamism in the picture, which is especially
apparent in his well-known photographs Wall
Street, 1915, and From the Viaduct, 125th
Street, New York, 1916.28
An article from 1922 reveals that Marin
was deeply involved in the debate as to
whether photography was an art form or not,
and indicates that due to Stieglitz and his
circle, he was of course fully au fait with
development in modernistic photography. The
article was entitled ”Can a Photograph Have
the Significance of Art?”29 With his
affirmative answer to this question, Marin
refers quite generally to Stieglitz’
photographs. With his well-known
photogravure The Steerage (fig. 8), from as
early as 1907 and published in Camera Work
in October 1911, Stieglitz had helped to
develop what he later called ”pure
photography”– a view of photography which
emphasised unmanipulated ”pure”
photography.30 In The Steerage, the formal
characteristics are exemplified, which are
similarly apparent in the approach of
photographers to the city environment. The
sharp cutting-off of the motif with the two
passenger decks on an Atlantic liner gives
the composition of the picture dynamism
through two diagonals, which exert a pull in
different directions: the funnel to the right
and the ladder to the left. The gangway in the
centre of the motif emphasises the
fragmentariness in the picture and
simultaneously gives depth to the
composition. The dramatisation of the twodimensional picture plane that the lines
create has a certain similarity with Marin’s
experiments with the expressive power of line
in his graphic works. Just like modernistic
photography, Marin does not, however, lose
his connection with perceived reality, despite
the abstracted idiom.
The urban landscape
After Marin returned to the USA, New York
and its skyscrapers became his preferred
motif for etching the rest of his life. Here he
found the urban landscape that acted as a
response to the natural landscape which he
depicted in his watercolours especially from
117 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n
Maine. Watercolours were an important part
of Marin’s production, in which he explored
the expressive character of colour; this can
be seen in Valley Landscape, 1918 (fig. 9),
and Sailboat, 1923 (fig. 10). In contrast to
the watercolours which Marin worked with
whatever the locality, graphics of this period
were exclusively employed to depict
architecture.31 Whatever the motive, one can
note today that there is a connection between
the visual expression of the New York skyline
and Marin’s use of etchings. The black/white
medium was apparently more suited to
depicting the silhouette of the city than the
representation of the glowing colours of nature.
The urban landscape is seen in the
etching Lower Manhattan from the Bridge,
1913 (fig. 11), which is a typical example of
Marin’s view of New York and its
architecture. Then, two decades after his
return from Europe, Marin depicted how the
city had been affected by the leap in scale
which architectonic development had
occasioned. From the traditional low building
along the Hudson River to rise sharply to the
skyscrapers further in on Manhattan. The
view from the bridge gives a slanting bird’s
eye view of the cityscape, with its topography
created by the infrastructure and tightpacked housing. From this distance, Marin’s
typical depiction of the human swarm at
street level disappears. As a sort of
compensation for this life in human scale,
the buildings in the foreground are animated.
The closely-packed masses are emphasised
through the frames which are reduplicated
several times, but are unfinished. The
skyscrapers rise against a neutralised
background, drawn with a contrastingly slight
contour line. The abrupt cutting-off of the
motif both in the foreground and background
gives a centralised composition, which helps
to unify the motif.
Marin did not only express his reading of
the topography of the city in purely visual
terms, but also described it in a short text for
a one-man show at 291 in 1913:
”I see great forces at work; great movements;
the large buildings and the small buildings;
the warring of the great and the small;
influences of one mass on another greater or
smaller mass. Feelings are aroused which
give me the desire to express the reaction of
these ’pull forces’, those influences which
play with one another; great masses pulling
smaller masses, each subject in some degree
to the other’s power. […]
While these powers are at work pushing,
pulling, sideways, downwards, upwards, I can
hear the sound of their strife and there is
great music being played.
And so I try to express graphically what a
great city is doing. Within the frames there
must be a balance, a controlling of these
warring, pushing, pulling forces. This is what
I am trying to realize.”32
One can visualise the contrasts and tensions
between volumes which he describes, in
Lower Manhattan from the Bridge. The
compositional construction of impact and
warring forces can be an abstract
visualisation of the music Marin seems to
have heard on meeting the new architecture.
The forces of this architecture push and drag
to one side, up and down, and are translated
into the violent movements made by Marin’s
etching needle as it scratches contour lines.
It is as if Marin’s physical movements
express the dynamism he sees at play
between the buildings’ masses. He mentions
his views on architecture in the same
quotation as above:
”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? We have been
told somewhere that a work of art is a thing
alive. You cannot create a work of art unless
the things you behold respond to something
within you. Therefore if these buildings move
me they too must have life.”33
The affinity between John Marin’s use of his
etching needle and his perception of
animated architecture shows his strength as
a modern graphic artist. He exploits the
expressive potential of the medium to the
utmost to depict the pulsating city life, which
is most powerfully expressed in his chief
work Brooklyn Bridge, No. 6 (Swaying). The
work marks a liberation in Marin’s artistic
production, which was both helped along by
Stieglitz and 291, and also the formalistic
experiments which were simultaneously
taking place in photography. Marin’s graphic
production from the softly toned etchings to
the sharply drawn staccato rhythms in his
urban landscapes can thus be seen in
continuation of the development from
pictorialistic atmospheric photography to
contrast-filled modernistic photography.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
In 1936 Marin was honoured as the first American
artist to be granted a retrospective exhibition at MoMa;
see E. M. Benson et al., John Marin: Watercolors, Oil
Paintings, Etchings, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1936. In 1950 he was well represented in the
American pavilion at the 25th Venice Biennale together
with Jackson Pollock, among others. After Marin’s death
in 1853, several memorial exhibitions were arranged,
for example in New York at the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, see Thornton Wilder, John Marin:
1870-1953, American Academy of Arts and Letters,
1954. The critic Robert Rosenblum called attention to
Marin in the same year as a forerunner of Abstract
Expressionism: ”He [Marin] stands in full center of the
major currents of American art … he parallels, even
prophesies, abstract-expressionist trends … The formal
analogies with, say de Kooning or Tomlin, are striking,
and one is again pressed to pay homage to this master
…”, see Robert Rosenblum, ‘Marin’s Dynamism’, Art
Digest no. 28, 1954, p. 13. In 1969 a descriptive
catalogue of Marin’s graphic art was published,
followed by a comprehensive exhibition; see Carl
Zigrosser, The Complete Etchings of John Marin,
Philadelphia Museum of Art 1969. In the following
decades, interest in John Marin was more muted, but
finally in 1990, the National Gallery of Art in
Washington arranged a large monographic exhibition of
both graphic art, watercolours and paintings,
occasioned by the donation by Marin’s son and
daughter-in-law of more than 400 drawings and
watercolours, see Ruth E. Fine, John Marin, National
Gallery of Art, Washington 1990. The headline of a
review of the exhibition John Marin: The 291 Years in
Richard York Gallery, New York in 1998 indicates that
Marin had been a comparatively forgotten artist for a
period: Hilton Kramer, Reintroducing John Marin,
Forgotten Modern Master, The New York Observer,
December 14, 1998, p. 36.
See Ruth E. Fine, John Marin, National Gallery of Art,
Washington 1990, pp. 23-25 and 289
See Herbert J. Seligmann, ‘291: A Vision through
Photography’ in America and Alfred Stieglitz, New York
1934, pp. 105-125.
Herbert J. Seligmann (ed.) Letters of John Marin, New
York, 1931, introduction unpaginated.
Dorothy Norman (ed.), The Selected Writings of John
Marin, New York 1949, introduction p. x.
The exhibition introduced both Marin and Alfred Maurer
(1868-1932), but Stieglitz’ allocation of hanging space
is an early indication of his personal preference.
Instead of dividing the space equally between the two
artists, he chose to hang Marin’s watercolours on three
walls, allowing Maurer the third only. See the exhibition
catalogue: Watercolors by John Marin and Sketches in Oil
by Alfred Maurer, 291, New York, March 30 – April 17,
with 25 watercolours by Marin and 15 paintings by
Maurer. See also Barbara Rose, John Marin, The 291
Years, New York 1998, p. 15.
Herbert J. Seligmann, Alfred Stieglitz Talking, New Haven
1966. The book was published by Yale University
Library, to which Seligmann had donated his private
correspondence with Stieglitz in 1953, and where The
Alfred Stieglitz Archive was established after a large
donation by Georgia O’Keefe in 1949.
Ibid. p. 1.
When Marin wanted to establish himself as an artist,
he was met with both scepticism and worry from his
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
father, which was probably also one of the decisive
factors in the comparative lateness of Marin’s
breakthrough as an artist. Their relationship was,
however, not so strained that his father did not support
him financially in all the years in Europe. After his
return to the USA, Stieglitz, according to himself,
fought stoutly for Marin’s artistic integrity. When his
father suggested that Marin could do commercial
etchings in the morning and wild watercolours in the
afternoon, Stieglitz answered that the father could just
as well ask newly-wed Mrs. Marin to be a prostitute in
the morning and a virgin in the afternoon; see Ruth E.
Fine, John Marin, National Gallery of Art, Washington
1990, p. 46.
In 1917, 291 closed, but from 1925 to 1929, Stieglitz
ran The Intimate Gallery, where he continued to
arrange an annual one-man show for Marin. From 1930
until his death in 1946, Stieglitz continued to arrange
yearly one-man shows with Marin at his last gallery An
American Place.
Herbert J. Seligmann (ed.) Letters of John Marin, New
York 1931, introduction unpaginated.
John Marin’s first biographer E. M. Benson emphasises
as early as 1935 the decisive importance Stieglitz had
for Marin’s artistic breakthrough, see E. M. Benson,
John Marin, The Man and His Work, Washington 1935, p. 28.
Quoted in Dorothy Normann (ed.), The Selected Writings
of John Marin, New York 1949, p. xi.
See e.g. E. M. Benson, John Marin, The Man and His Work,
Washington 1935, pp. 16 and 31, as well as a
discussion of Marin’s alleged seclusion from
contemporary art in Ruth E. Fine, John Marin, National
Gallery of Art, Washington 1990, pp. 77-79.
According to Marin’s own view, as it finds expression in
letters to Stieglitz, he was a family man, who loved
shooting, fishing and nature, besides being an artist. He
describes himself as a ”worker” and was called ”John
Marin, Frontiersman”, which is the title of an article by
Frederick Wright in the catalogue of the John Marin
Memorial Exhibition, Los Angeles: Art Galleries,
University of California, 1955. See also Barbara Rose,
John Marin: The 291 Years, Richard York Gallery, New
York 1998, pp. 26-27.
Herbert J. Seligmann, ‘291: A Vision through
Photography’ in America and Alfred Stieglitz, New York
1934, p. 115.
Herbert J. Seligmann, Alfred Stieglitz Talking, New Haven
1966, p. 88.
There were several practical circumstances surrounding
his arrival in Paris, which helped Marin get started with
the graphic medium. His stepbrother, Charles Bittinger
(1879-1970), who was also an artist, had been living
in Paris for a number of years at the time when Marin
arrived there. He had experience with the graphic arts
and helped Marin with the technical preparations by
installing a printing press for him. Furthermore,
Bittinger lived in the same house as the American
graphic artist George C. Aid (1872-1938), to whom he
introduced Marin.
See e.g. Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea, 1871, Tate
Britain, London.
Published in Camera Work with Alfred Stieglitz, ‘The
Flat-iron’ in October 1903 and Edward J. Steichen, The
Flatiron – Evening in April 1906 respectively.
Reproduced in Marianne Fulton Margolis, ‘Camera Work’.
A Pictorial Guide, New York 1978, pp. 11 and 39.
See Marianne Fulton Margolis, ‘Camera Work’. A Pictorial
Guide, New York 1978, pp 14, 46.
22 Carl Zigrosser, The Complete Etchings of John Marin,
Philadelphia Museum of Art 1969, p. 11:”It must be
kept in mind that Whistler’s prestige in graphic art was
at its peak in the decade in 1903. No young etcher
could escape his pervasive authority. Marin did not copy
slavishly to produce little Whistlers: he was merely
speaking in the common idiom of the day.”
23 Ibid. pp. 12-13 and no. 79-82.
24 Marsden Hartley, in the exhibition brochure from
Marin’s one-man show: Marin Exhibition, The Intimate
Gallery, November-December, 1928, unpaginated.
25 Marin executed also a series of motifs of the Woolworth
building in 1913, see Carl Zigrosser, The Complete
Etchings of John Marin, Philadelphia Museum of Art
1969, nos. 113-116.
26 Dorothy Normann (ed.), The Selected Writings of John
Marin, New York 1949, p.3.
27 Reproduced in Marianne Fulton Margolis, ‘Camera Work’.
A Pictorial Guide, New York 1978, p. 131.
28 Ibid. pp. 134 and 139.
29 Ibid. pp. 86-88.
30 See Sarah Greenough and Juan Hamilton, Alfred
Stieglitz. Photographs and Writings, National Gallery of
Art. Washington 1983, p. 20, for a discussion of de
Zayas’ definition of ”pre photography” and Stieglitz’
influence on de Zayas.
31 This holds true for the period right up to 1932, when
Marin executed the first etchings with a different motif
than architecture, namely a sailboat.
32 Written for the exhibition at 291 in 1913 and
published in Camera Work nos. 42-43, April-July 1913.
Quoted from Dorothy Normann (ed.), The Selected
Writings of John Marin, New York 1949, pp. 4-5.
33 Ibid. p. 4.
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