International studio (58.1916)

John Marins IM at er-Colours

are the identical implements made and used by
his armourer-ancestors and handed down from
father to son through hundreds of years. It is a
good likeness of him, too, as the privileged
visitor will find him. To the left of the picture,
seen through the open doorway, is the great forge
with its hood and bellows and the anvil. On the
wall behind him is a polychrome stone figure of
St. Eloi, the patron saint of all those who wield
the hammer. Here are also an ancient drawing
of a suit of armour—the same suit, incidentally,
which one sees standing complete but for the
helmet to the left of M. Tachaux and a little in
front of the doorway—the diploma of award of
a silver medal given him at the Exposition
Universelle at Paris in 1900, some books of
armourer’s designs, and a large rack of tools.
The right hand wall and the bench in front of it
show, among other objects, many more tools,
including an armourer’s vise and a great shears,
and numerous pieces of metal and parts of
armour.

JOHN MARIN’S WATER-COLOURS
At 291 Fifth Avenue is an exhibition of
considerable importance to those interested in
the more individual and vital expression of
American Art. Here John Marin exposes about
thirty water-colours which show a remarkable
year’s progress toward the profounder art prob-
lems—problems which every sincere modern
artist must sooner or later solve for himself.
Marin, unlike many American painters, has
chosen to devote his every energy to mastering
them; and it is refreshing to visit an exhibition
where one is not confronted with obvious imita-
tion. Marin’s personality stands forth, healthy
and strong, not dependent on the crutches of
second-hand inspiration.
While the passing craze of Futurism, the epi-
demic of unintelligent distortion seen en courant
in Cezanne and Matisse, and though sterile
primitivism of Douanier, Rousseau and Zak have
been sweeping over the field of our national art,
Marin has forged ahead toward a goal of his own
imagining. No excess of enthusiasm for the
easily achieved fame which comes from painting
a la mode has shunted him from his direct path.
Beginning with almost literal translations from
landscape, Marin has, in one short year, gone far

toward conquering many of the deeper concerns
of composition. To say that he has achieved a
finality would only give the unjust impression
that his vision and talent are restricted. He has
made much progress; and he still has some dis-
tance to go. But during his evolution he has
not passed over any of the vital lessons which
might turn up later on to impede his final
progress.
It is impossible to say that one painting of his
is better than another. Marin is in process; and
we must judge almost every work of his from an
individual standpoint of partial achievement. In
some of his pictures, where the delicacy and light-
ness are the result of the water-colourist’s in-
stinct, there is a completeness which tempts us
to pass final judgment; but, on turning round,
we perceive that this completeness is much slighter
and less advanced than the progress made in
another work where a more extended order has
been attempted but not quite satisfactorily at-
tained. To criticize Marin justly one must
judge him from each separate point in his
progress from which he has made his different
studies.
From the very simplest types of order (such
as a slight block form of objects) he has attained
to a rhythmic conception of his subject-matter
until it has become almost abstract. In this
sense, he at times reveals a certain inevitable
Chinese aspect. Some of his pictures betray a
great desire to see and feel, through intense con-
centration, the inherent (varying as the painter
varies) rhythm of his subject. Herein he attunes
himself to Cezanne’s mental attitude. In his
latest paintings a process of elimination is going
on; the objects, as such, have almost entirely
disappeared, and all that remains is the salient
line, or combination of lines, which to him ex-
presses the plastic attraction of his natural
inspiration.
His colour is not at all times pleasing because
it falls short of a complete gamut; but as his
sensitivity develops along the lines of volumnear
balance and three-dimensional poise, the compre-
hensiveness of his colour will inevitably follow.
At that time—and I predict that it is not far
distant we may expect to see some of America’s
most genuine expression delivered from the
shackles of European snobbery and standing on
the high pinnacle of personal achievement.
W. H. W.

XVIII