West Forty-Second Street from Ferryboat

West Forty-Second Street from Ferryboat — John Marin. 1929.

Medium: Watercolor with wiping, blotting, and scraping, and with black colored pencil, black crayon, and graphite, on moderately thick (estimated), slightly textured, ivory wove paper (all edges trimmed) perimeter mounted to wood-pulp board faced with cream wove paper, in original frame. Dimensions: 54.9 × 66.3 cm (21 5/8 × 26 1/8 in.); Secondary support: 58.3 × 75.3 cm (23 × 29 11/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Marin’s interest in internal framing devices became increasingly significant in his watercolors of the 1920s. This large sheet, much admired and exhibited during the artist’s lifetime, captures the waterfront through a window on the Weehawken Ferry. Marin painted the upper edge to resemble a rolled canvas window covering, employing a playful trompe l’oeil manner. Equally improvisational is the artist’s inclusion of a pink mountain range beyond the New York skyline, which equates nature’s grand peaks and valleys with the soaring towers and narrow canyons of the urban landscape.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.