In 1920 John Marin bought a seven-room house in Cliffside Park, a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, within easy commuting distance of New York City. Contrasting with the summer views he produced annually in Maine, Marin painted winter views of his residential neighborhood covered in snow. The subject of this unsigned and undated oil sketch is almost certainly the house with a Dutch roof and three windows that appears over the garage of Marin’s house in the Gallery’s Buildings with Snowbank, Cliffside, New Jersey. Trained as an architect early in his career, Marin was adept at rendering urban cityscapes such as New York. In House with Dutch Roof and Buildings with Snowbank, Cliffside, New Jersey he turned his expert eye to the suburban architecture of New Jersey. These works date from shortly before the Great Depression, when Marin took a renewed interest in experimenting with oil paints that would continue for the rest of his career. The small scale is similar to many of his celebrated watercolors, the medium with which Marin is most closely associated.