The Sea, Maine

In establishing his modernist style, John Marin frequently turned to the untamed landscape for his subjects, especially the landscape of Maine. The New Yorker visited Maine every year, spending the summer of 1921 in Stonington, a picturesque fishing village on the southern shore of Deer Isle, one of the many islands along Maine’s coast. The Sea, Maine is a plein-air interpretation of the island’s rugged shoreline of granite outcroppings and windswept pine and spruce. In this dynamic meeting of land and sea, Marin united abstract and representational impulses, using gestural strokes, bold colors, and delicate washes to denote nature’s essential forms. His line and brushwork have an urgent, improvisational quality, conveying the rhythm and motion of wind and surf.