Winter Landscape

c. 1900

John Marin

Associated Names
John Marin

Painter, American, 1870 - 1953

This painting shows a winter landscape with leafless trees, snow-dusted buildings, dried grass, and brush poking through the snow. The sky is pale and overcast, painted in a gray-blue color. Beyond the brown trees, the buildings are yellow with red doors and dark windows. The white ground at the bottom of the painting is dotted with scrubby plants in shades of brown, yellow, red, and black. The brushstrokes in this painting are loose, visible swirls, especially those painting the snowy ground.
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This winter landscape is noteworthy as one of the few paintings that John Marin is known to have executed during his student years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, prior to his departure for Paris in 1905. While it recalls the work of Pennsylvania impressionists like Edward Willis Redfield, the emphasis on tone and mood and the intimate scale of this subdued, monochromatic winter scene is also indebted to the aestheticism of James McNeill Whistler, who exerted a strong influence during Marin’s formative years.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of John Marin, Jr.

  • Dimensions

    overall: 22.8 x 29.8 cm (9 x 11 3/4 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1986.54.1

More About this Artwork

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Winter Landscape, c. 1900

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1870-1953]; his estate; by inheritance to his son, John C. Marin, Jr. [1914-1988], Cape Split, Maine; gift 1986 to NGA.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1970

  • Reich, Sheldon. John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné. Tucson, 1970: no. 00.1 (as Landscape).

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 230, repro.

Inscriptions

across top stretcher bar reverse: (Landscape) c. 1900-1905 SR#1[the "1" crossed out] 00.1 NBM 2/21/84 / 9 x 11 3/4

Wikidata ID

Q20190779

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