Tree and Mountain Forms, Delaware River Country

Marin painted this watercolor in the fall of 1916, while staying at Echo Lake, Pennsylvania, near the Delaware Water Gap. He worked so vigorously that bristles from his brush remain embedded in the paint. Experimenting with subtractive techniques, he gave the resulting marks a prominence equal to that of a brushstroke. Repeatedly rewetting some passages, he used extensive blotting and scrubbing to create ghostly effects that conjure nature’s fleeting changes.