John Marin painted four views of buildings on the New Castle, Delaware, town green in 1931: View from the Green, New Castle, Delaware; Third Street; Immanuel Church: Close View; and Immanuel Church: Distant View. By this period in his career, the artist typically divided his time between Maine and New Jersey, but he had an early history with Delaware; as a child he visited his grandfather’s peach farm near Milford. Marin’s biographer, MacKinley Helm, describes this family farm as the site of young Marin’s first sketches. ^[1] Marin’s letters from 1931 document time spent in Small Point, Maine; in North Hero, Vermont (on an island in Lake Champlain); and at his home in Cliffside, New Jersey. The timing of and reason for a visit to New Castle that year is unknown. ^[2] The town, a port on the Delaware River, is just south of Wilmington and about 15 miles south of Arden, an artists’ colony.

New Castle, founded in 1651, had a complex early history, changing names as it passed from the Netherlands to Sweden, to Great Britain. In 1704 New Castle became the capital of the colony of Delaware. Because the town’s historic architecture remained largely intact, it became a popular tourist site at the height of the Colonial Revival during the early 1920s.

Marin depicted buildings that border the New Castle Green, a focal point of town life. In painting View from the Green, Marin faced the town hall (built in 1823), the Sheriff’s House (partially visible, built in 1857), and the back of the courthouse (built in 1732). ^[3] Marin paid close attention to architectural details like the cupolas atop the town hall and the courthouse, while still rendering large swaths of the scene in broad brushstrokes.

In another view from the green, Third Street, New Castle, Delaware, Marin painted seven historic homes lining Third Street. Specific houses are recognizable because he included accurate architectural details. Silsbee’s Alley, through which a house on Fourth Street is visible, appears slightly to the left of the center of the composition. The tall brick house to the right of the alley is the Gemmill House, built around 1801. The building to the left of the alley is Rodney House, built in 1831. ^[4] The branches of the six trees on the New Castle Green reach up to fill the sky, providing an expressive quality to this otherwise quiet view of the colonial town.

Immanuel Church, New Castle, Delaware: Close View and Distant View represent one of the town’s most prominent colonial buildings and tourist attractions ^[fig1]. ^[5] The original church (the present hip-roofed nave) was begun in 1703, and the transept, tower, and steeple were added when it was reconstructed between 1820 and 1822. In Close View, Marin concentrated on the distinctive battlemented tower surmounted by a shingled spire, which he cropped slightly. The clock dial is almost delineated enough to be legible. An obelisk peeking up in the left foreground is probably the Stockton family monument in the church cemetery.

In the less detailed Distant View, the entire Immanuel Church is seen from the southwest. Marin excluded the old two-story Academy building that stands at the northwest corner of the New Castle Green, which would have competed with the view of the church. The steeple, topped with a delicate cross in the full view, is dramatically framed by Marin’s treatment of the sky in triangular bands of blue. ^[6] What appears to be a tree leans into the frame in the left foreground, and Marin has suggested its foliage with gestural strokes of brown, leaving the steeple fully visible.

The artist’s interest in historic ecclesiastic architecture began during his extended stay in Europe between 1905 and 1911 and endured throughout his career. Marin made etchings, drawings, and watercolors of Trinity Church in lower Manhattan (the National Gallery owns several such drawings from the mid-1910s), but his less abstract paintings of Immanuel Church are more closely related to his nearly contemporary etching St. Paul’s against the El (1930). Twenty years later, in 1950–1951, Marin made etchings of a similar Dutch church in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, including 1991.49.7 and 1986.54.151.

Marin’s four views of New Castle’s historic center, painted quickly with active brushwork, waver between accuracy and modernism. He took interest in specific sites and details, such as particular houses on Third Street, the church clock, and the cupolas on the town hall and courthouse. His early training in architecture—he worked for six years as an architect before becoming an artist—may explain his eye for these aspects. In these four paintings, Marin took his greatest liberties with nature, experimenting with trees and sky to abstract and dramatize the scenes.

The fabric support was stretched over a piece of cardboard and adhered to it with glue. The fabric’s bottom edge has cusping and nail holes from a previous use, so it is likely that the artist cut this segment from a larger prepared and stretched canvas and then attached it to the rigid support. The commercially prepared white ground remains exposed throughout and plays an active part in the design. The artist applied paint wet into wet with energetic brushwork and impasto. He scratched into the wet paint to define contours and imply areas of foliage. Other than minor abrasion and flattening in the impastos, and the grime that has accumulated on the unvarnished surface, the painting is in very good condition.

Michael Swicklik

July 24, 2024