AFA 18th Anniversary

2018 Antiques & Fine Art 123 John Marin (1870–1953), Woolworth Building under Construction, 1912. Watercolor and graphite on textured watercolor paper, 19⅝ x 15⅜ inches. Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection; Gift of Norma B. Marin (2013.018.011). Marin’s drawings of the Woolworth Building and the Municipal Building were the basis for a series of watercolors of each structure. Watercolors of both buildings appeared at the 291 gallery early in 1913. A Municipal Building image went on to the 11th Annual Watercolor Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But the greatest critical attention, then and now, went to the watercolors of the Woolworth Building that moved from 291 to the famed 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, remembered as the Armory Show. The series of Woolworth Building watercolors, showing both the progress of the construction and the development of Marin’s abstraction, is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. The works progressed from relatively naturalistic images of the building under construction to a sweeping gestural abstract image of the completed edifice. The Arkansas Arts Center’s incomplete watercolor of the Woolworth Building under Construction shows an earlier version of the idea, with Marin using a realistic vantage point before he moved to a less specific perspective in the later completed works. It also shows us the artist sketching the structure of the building on the paper before painting over the graphite drawing.