Mills and Footbridge, Meaux

Marin made repeated trips to Meaux, an old mill town 25 miles northeast of Paris. Here dabs of diluted pink, red, and yellow suggest the movement of clouds, figures, and wind. Marin painted the sky with long, dry brushstrokes, then defined the clouds, working wet-into-wet by dripping in dilute washes of color that dispersed the pigment and yielded dark, feathered lines. After the washes dried, he punctuated the remaining white of the sky with yellow marks to add brightness. Demonstrating an intuitive understanding of how watercolor behaves, as well as a willingness to experiment with unpredictable results, Marin found such manipulations liberating. This was among the 25 watercolors shown at Stieglitz’s 291 in the spring of 1909, the first time the gallery owner exhibited Marin’s work.