Detail of group image,1912 by unknown photographer. Smithsonian Institution, aa_walkabra_4953

John Marin

American painter, 1870–1953

BiographyMarin was a pioneering modern artist, best known for his city scenes and landscapes rendered in watercolor. Marin was raised in Weehawken, New Jersey. He attended the Stevens Institute of Technology, studying to be an architect. Between 1899 and 1901, Marin attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, studying with Thomas Anshutz and William Merritt Chase. He moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League, before traveling to Europe, where he remained for several years, visiting France, England, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands. He developed a distinctive and highly abstract watercolor aesthetic. In 1909 Alfred Stieglitz mounted a solo show of Marin's work at 291 Gallery in New York; this was the first of many exhibitions of Marin's work by Stieglitz. In 1913 Marin displayed his frenetic cityscapes (including the DAM's St. Paul's, Lower Manhattan) in the Armory Show, and he was among the most progressive American artists in the exhibition. In 1914, he spent his first summer in Maine, and the rocky coast there became one of his favorite subjects. Marin visited Taos, New Mexico, in 1929 and produced a series of watercolors in his characteristic angular, stylized manner.

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