On Morse Mountain, No. 6, Maine (1928): Art, History and Details

On Morse Mountain, No. 6, Maine (1928) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Marin (American, 1870–1953).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One of America's most important watercolor practitioners, John Marin spent every summer in Maine from 1914 through 1928, and the state's coastline became a central focus of his work. By the late 1920s, when this work was made, he was experimenting with bold black elements in his compositions and painted frames or borders. On Morse Mountain, No. 6, Maine shows Marin using dry charcoal to create areas of shocking black over which he layered inky black wash. The technique has the effect of framing the image and leading the eye toward the center. With its strikingly different character from other works made in Maine in 1914 (see 2020.134, 2020.136, 2020.137, 2020.138, 2020.139), the work shows how John Marin repeatedly challenged himself as well as the medium of watercolor with improvisations in color, paint handling, perspective, and movement.

Object facts

• Title: On Morse Mountain, No. 6, Maine
• Date: 1928
• Creator attribution: John Marin (American, 1870–1953)
• Culture: America
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Watercolor and black crayon and reductive work with the end of paint brush on thick, moderately rough-textured wove paper
• Dimensions: Image and Sheet: 42.3 x 56.5 cm (16 5/8 x 22 1/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 20th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2020.135

A detail from the museum

John Marin made this watercolor during one of the last summers he would spend in Maine, at a time when he called most of the watercolors he executed "Movements in Paint."

Collection credit

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fine, Ruth. "John Marin." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 152-161. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.