Ragged Island, Maine

Ragged Island, Maine — John Marin. 1914.

Medium: Watercolor with rewetting and blotting, over graphite, on moderately thick, slightly textured, off-white wove paper (top and left edges trimmed), in original frame. Dimensions: 42 × 49.7 cm (16 9/16 × 19 5/8 in.).

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

This aptly named island—a mound of stone, pine, and rocky cliffs in Northeast Casco Bay, just a few miles west of Small Point, Maine—prompted Marin to move away from the literal representation of space. Without differentiating cliff from shoreline, the tipped-up composition provides no perspective, generating a sense of vertigo held in check by a peaceful blue sea. The sea was created by adding excess blue, then tilting the paper, encouraging the wash to pool and dry along the rocks. Marin emphasized the flat patterning of the composition by selecting a wide, flat frame for this work.

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.