Blue Sea (recto); Sheet of Sketches (verso)

In this watercolor from the summer of 1923, Marin looked down over steep ledges studded with rock pine toward the harbor and islands below. He painted with overlapping transparent washes, employing little to no reworking, rewetting, or blotting. The artist used clear water, floating it into adjacent washes along the perimeter to achieve a hazy frame. Strikingly, he superimposed a structure of emphatic horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines painted with a wide brush and blue watercolor. The effect is fencelike, suggesting that Marin might have been painting on a railed porch or the top level of a dock leading down to the water.