Woolworth Building, No. 28

1912

John Marin

Artist, American, 1870 - 1953

A towering skyscraper zooms up and away from us in this loosely painted, vertical watercolor. People and buildings crowding the bottom third of the composition are painted in almost abstract shapes in tones of lapis and slate blue, harvest yellow, garnet red. In the center of the composition, the lower two-thirds of the Woolworth Building are lined with ghostly rows of pale blue and brown windows over mostly blank, cream-white paper. The top third of the building is painted with more saturated violet and smoky purple beneath a coral red tip. Slashes and swishes in pastel peach, blue, and yellow fill the sky.
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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    watercolor over graphite

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer

  • Dimensions

    overall: 47 x 39.6 cm (18 1/2 x 15 9/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1967.13.8

  • Catalogue Raisonné

    Reich 1970, 12.66

Artwork history & notes

Exhibition History

1913

  • International Exhibition of Modern Art [The Armory Show], Association of American Painters and Sculptors, Armory of the Sixty-Ninth Infantry, New York, 1913, no. 139 (not shown in Chicago or Boston).

2001

  • Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001, no. 28.

2013

  • The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution, The New-York Historical Society, New York, 2013-2014, unnumbered catalogue.

Bibliography

1963

  • Brown, Milton Wolf. The Story of the Armory Show. New York, 1963: 265, 139.

1970

  • Reich, Sheldon. John Marin: A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970, no. 12.66.

1990

  • Fine, Ruth E. John Marin. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1990, p. 124, pl. 112.

1993

  • Block Points: The Annual Journal and Report of the Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University I (1993): fig. 6.

2000

  • Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001: no. 28.

2013

  • Kushner, Maryilyn Satin. "The Armory Show at 100." American Art Review 25, no. 6 (November-December 2013): 72, color fig.

2018

  • Wagner, Ann Prentice and Josephine White Rodgers. Becoming John Marin: Modernist at Work, Exh. cat. Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, 2018: 19, fig. 2.9.

Wikidata ID

Q64582862

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