Through the Window, Venice

In rendering this Venetian scene, Marin guided the viewer’s eye toward the high horizon by obscuring the gondolas in the foreground with a film of ink. In some impressions, he clearly used his fingers to remove areas of plate tone and employed his fingernails to create linear marks in the ink; this hands-on approach would quickly find its way into his watercolor practice as well. Marin’s nuanced, lively surfaces can be understood as his homage to the experimental printing techniques of Whistler, yet they also reveal early signs that he was forging ahead of the work of his predecessor.