On View
Not on viewObject number1989/90.43
Autumn Piece
Artist
John Marin
(American, 1870-1953)
Date1951
Mediumwatercolor and pencil on paper
Dimensionsimage: 12 in. × 17 1/8 in. (30.5 × 43.5 cm)
frame: 22 1/4 × 27 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. (56.5 × 69.9 × 3.8 cm)
frame: 22 1/4 × 27 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. (56.5 × 69.9 × 3.8 cm)
Credit LineBequest of Genevieve U. Gilmore
Exhibition History"Twentieth Century American Art: Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Photography," KIA (Oct. 1 - Dec. 31, 1961).
"Paintings By American Masters: Fifth Anniversary Exhibition," KIA (Sept. 14 - Oct. 19, 1966).
"A Gift to Kalamazoo: Selections from the Genevieve U. Gilmore Collection," KIA (Apr. 2 - May 5, 1991).
"Modern Masters from the KIA Permanent Collection," Saginaw Art Museum (Nov. 12 - Dec. 5, 1993), Rankin Center Fine Art Gallery, Ferris State University (Jan. - Feb. 1994).
"Masterworks from the KIA Permanent Collection," Dennos Museum Center (Mar. 1997 - Feb. 1998); Midland Center for the Arts (Apr. - July, 1998).
"Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection," KIA Long Gallery (Nov. 18, 2006 - Feb. 4, 2007).
"American Perspectives: Modernism from the Collection," KIA Long Gallery (Apr. 25 - Aug. 30, 2009).
"American Perspectives on Modernism" KIA Traveling Exhibition, University of Mary Washington (Jan. 26 - Apr. 2, 2017).
"American Perspectives on Modernism" KIA Traveling Exhibition, Hoyt Art Center, New Castle, PA (Sept. 14 - Nov. 12, 2021).Label TextAutumn Piece exemplifies some of the trademarks of Marin's work, including a semi-abstract, expressive, almost calligraphic style and a decades-long fascination with serially chronicling the Maine landscape. A New Jersey native, Marin failed as a wholesaler and architect before turning to art. He spent several years traveling in Europe before returning to New York and developing a close association with the modernist photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz. With Stieglitz’ help, beginning in the 1920s Marin’s public profile grew significantly, and in 1948, he was voted by museum directors and painters in a Look magazine poll as “America’s Artist No. 1”.
Although he lived in the New York suburbs for most of his life, Marin spent many summers and autumns painting watercolors on the coast of Maine, first visiting the state in 1914 and passing countless further summers there in the following decades, moving further and further down the coast over time before settling in a remote lobstering community called Cape Split in 1934. Marin’s passion for Maine subjects was a symptom of a broader fascination with the state. Like many of the hundreds of thousands of other annual tourists from points south, Marin’s many visits to Maine were motivated by both the natural beauty of its coast and an interest in the lives of its working-class denizens, including and especially its fisher- and lobstermen. After his first few visits Marin took to calling himself “The Ancient Mariner”, often undertaking hobbies like fishing, clamming, and berrying that imitated the activities that many native Mainers pursued to make ends meet. Paintings like Autumn Piece reflect both the dynamic compositions, fascination with the natural world, and intuitive stylistic flourishes that helped establish Marin as a modernist pioneer and this broader fascination with Maine that propelled the direction and success of his work.
