West Forty-Second Street from Ferryboat

Marin’s interest in internal framing devices became increasingly significant in his watercolors of the 1920s. This large sheet, much admired and exhibited during the artist’s lifetime, captures the waterfront through a window on the Weehawken Ferry. Marin painted the upper edge to resemble a rolled canvas window covering, employing a playful trompe l’oeil manner. Equally improvisational is the artist’s inclusion of a pink mountain range beyond the New York skyline, which equates nature’s grand peaks and valleys with the soaring towers and narrow canyons of the urban landscape.