Marsh at High Tide

Jules Olitski gained fame as an abstract painter who thinned his pigments and poured them to stain the canvas. In retrospect such work was an anomaly in his career, most of his images, whether on canvas or—as here—on paper, show the physical action of the artist’s hand. He made this landscape late in his life, after the spotlight of fame had turned in other directions and critics began to pan his work. He seems to have cared little about the comments of others, “I have never felt bound by any art theory. I just try to get into the work and let it in some intense way be made.”