The Red Sun, Brooklyn Bridge

This celebrated image of the Brooklyn Bridge is probably Marin’s first full-scale realization of this iconic subject in watercolor. Made from a vantage point on the bridge itself, this work highlights the strong diagonal lines of the suspension cables, through which we see an intense, vibrating red sun. As the artist explained, he endeavored to paint pictures that would recapture the emotional experience of what he called the city’s “pull forces.” Here he did this through a kinetic interplay of line and color, using complementary color relationships and an extraordinary range of unorthodox methods for applying paint—such as the blue dots at right, which were stamped directly from the tube—to keep the eye in perpetual motion.