J O H N M A R I N T H E M A N A N D H I S W O R K B E B E M . O Y . N S N T H E A M E R I C A N F E D E R A T I O N O F A R T S W A S H I N G T O N 1 9 3 5 C O P Y R I G H T 1 M . B E N S O N , 9 3 5 , B Y E . P R I N T E D I N T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A B Y ' L I T T L A N D I V S C O M P A N Y J . J . E E N E W Y O R K I wan t to ackn owledge my indebtedn ess to the following ' to Alfred Stieglitz who at con siderable in convenien ce to himself made it ' ” possible for me to see all the Marin s at an Am erican Place and for supplying the bulk of my illustrative material; to my wife for the fine editorial j ob tha t she did with the text of his b k an d or maki n valuabl c i ical t oo f g e, r t suggestion s for its imp rovemen t; to D uncan Phillip s and the Columbus Gallery of Fin e Art for their gen ero us gift of photographs ; an d to the latte r again as well as to Raymon d 65 Raymond for p ermission to reproduce from their color plates; to Robert ]osephy who is respo nsible for the typographical appearance his b o k am o c urse es eciall r of t o I , f o , p y g ate ful ; as I am also to The American Magazine of Art for permission to use material that e i lica ion 1 w n origin ally app ear d in th s p ub t . a t also to than k J ohn Marin for con tributing the acke desi n but r icul rl or n ot l ki n j t g , pa t a y f oo g exasp erated while I bo mbarded him merci i For hes r v es lessly with quest on s of fac t . t e a ag o n his time and temper I hope he has forgiven E . M . B . me . C O N T E N T S MAR MA I . IN , THE N MAR W RK II . IN , HIS O Selections from Marin ’ s Letters and other published and unpublished writings Biographical Note 1 1 1 ’ Marin s Palettes 1 1 1 1 1 2 Collections , Public and Private PLATES 1 . 1 2 0 Portrait of John Marin , 9 2 . 1 2 Three Master , 9 3 . 1 2 3 Ship , Sea , and Sky Forms , 9 3 . 1 0 4 Atlantic Series , 9 5 . 1 0 6 5 Bridge Canal , Amsterdam , 9 6 . 1 0 8 London Omnibus , 9 . 1 0 7 Street of the Cathedral , Meaux , 9 8 8 . 1 0 The Seine , Paris , 9 9 . 1 1 0 9 Girl Sewing , Paris , 9 1 0 . K 1 1 0 The Tyrol at ufstein , 9 1 1 . 1 1 Movement , Fifth Avenue , 9 2 1 2 . 1 1 Woolworth Building, 9 3 1 . 1 1 3 Looking Out on Casco Bay , 9 4 1 . 1 1 4 Marin Island , Small Point , Maine , 9 5 1 . 1 1 6 5 Tree on Marin Island , 9 1 6 . 1 Drawing in Wash , 9 3 5 1 . 1 1 7 Sunset , Maine Coast , 9 9 T rt 2 1 8 . o o 1 0 Fish , g , 9 R 2 1 . 1 1 9 Trees and ocks and Schooner , 9 2 0 . R 1 2 1 Lower Manhattan from the iver , 9 2 1 . 1 2 1 Lower Manhattan , 9 2 2 . 1 2 1 Sea , Tree , and Boat , Small Point , Maine , 9 2 . 1 2 2 3 Maine Islands , 9 2 . 1 2 4 Wind on Land and Sea , 9 3 2 . 1 2 5 Becalmed , 9 3 1 2 2 6 . Tidal Falls , Deer Isle , Maine , 9 3 1 2 2 7 . Maine Town , 9 3 1 2 2 8 . Stonington , Maine , 9 4 2 . 9 Eastern Boulevard , Weehawken , New Jersey , R 1 2 0 . 3 Downtown , iver Movement , 9 g 6 1 . 1 2 3 Telephone Building , 9 6 2 . 1 2 3 The Pine Tree , Small Point , Maine , 9 1 2 6 3 3 . Mt . Chocorua , 9 1 2 6 3 4 . Pertaining to Stonington Harbor , Maine , 9 . A 1 2 3 5 White Mountains , utumn , 9 7 6 . an d 3 The Harbor , Deer Isle , Maine , Pertaining 1 2 Thereto , 9 7 1 2 8 3 7 . Schooners , Maine , 9 8 . 1 2 8 3 Abstraction , Lower Manhattan , 9 3 9 . The Harbor and Pertaining to Deer Isle , 1 2 Maine , 9 7 0 . 1 2 8 4 Street Crossing , New York, 9 1 . 1 0 4 Storm Over Taos , New Mexico , 9 3 2 . 1 2 4 Corn Dance , New Mexico , 9 9 . 1 1 43 Buoy , Maine , 9 3 . 1 2 44 Phippsburg , Maine , 9 3 - 4 5 . Fifth Avenue Looking West at Forty Second 1 Street , 9 3 3 6 . 1 4 Lake in the Tonk Mountain , 9 3 4 “ . 1 47 Drawing in Wash , 9 3 5 8 . 1 4 Circus Forms , 9 3 4 - 1 49 . Blue Eyed Figure and Sea , 9 3 4 l i 1 1 1 0 . e a ad es 5 S , Cape Split , Maine , 9 3 9 3 5 R 1 1 . 5 estaurant With Figures , 9 3 5 J O H N M A R I N 2 . 2 . THREE MASTER ( water color) 1 9 3 Collection Philip L . Goodwin MAR T HE MA I . I N , N as mu ch of him as it is p ossible to sep arate from his work TO THE WORLD at large there is nothing especially astonishing in the fact that John Marin is about to round - f out his sixty fi th year . To those who know this fellow with hair cropped low over a broad forehead and a face as i k — full of wr n les as a winter apple , this stubborn , arith metical fact seems hardly credible . For in neither the man nor hi s work is one ever aware of the clicking heels of time but rather of something as ageless and as mobile as the sea or the sky . The comparison is not an arbitrary one . Marin I 3 is what Marin does . A painter of sky , sea and mountain ' forms , and all things pertaining thereto , something of their combined essence has clung to him , as moss to stone , as - the smell of fish to a fisherman , of wood shavings to a car en ter p , or graft to a politician . The man Marin is all those things with which the artist in Marin has identified himself , which some forty years of tensive seeing and doing in and with the physical world have made him ' the swift movement of tides cutting channel pat terns in the sea ; islands at sunset locked in velvet shadows ; sailing ships braced against a smacking wind or idling in calm waters ; scrub pines clustered against the breast of mountains ; trees on mountain tops , shaggy as the wool of goats , piercing dry air with porcupine branches ; roads that bend and wind as gracefully as dancers , as perilously as acrobats ; buildings of stone and steel crouching together like sheep in a storm , or pyramided , painting the sky with shafts of silver ; people in city streets churned between canyons of light and shadow . Marin is all these things and many more . And he is neither older nor younger than the formal equivalents into whi ch his art has resolved them . One must be young to bear such vis ions , to suckle them in darkness and light , in and out of season ; strong , full throated visions which , like their maker , remain eternally young . Not all visions remain young . Many die in childbirth . Thousands are dead but do not know it . They are the pic ra torial incubi spawned in the bed of undesire ; scrawny , hitic c , counterfeit visions ; pieces of nature which nature , “ if it could voice its protest , would repudiate . You there , “ sa v hanging on the wall , nature would y , you ha e purloined my green grass , my seas , and my mountains . But even a blind man can see that you have taken my body an d left my spirit ” behind . Nature would have other things to say about Marin because Marin has other things to say about n ature . I 4 ' Who is this fellow Marin , anyway He belongs to that ’ breed of men who wear their wisdom lightly ; who haven t a pennyweight of sophistication in their make -up ; who get riflin - to the root of things , not by g the culture vaults of the past , but by doing their own spadework , developing their — own self discovered claims . It is not to the work of others that Marin turns for nourishment , but to the fathomless reservoir within himself which , in turn , is being constantly - fed by the nature sources of his own vision . The road he U travels by bears none but his own footprints .