Ocean and Rocks

Ocean and Rocks — John Marin. 1917.

Medium: Watercolor with charcoal and stumping, and charcoal wash, on thick, slightly textured, ivory wove paper (lower and right edges trimmed), in original frame. Dimensions: 42 × 49.5 cm (16 9/16 × 19 1/2 in.).

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

In 1917 Marin painted some of the most abstract watercolors of his career, influenced in part by an exhibition that year of Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolors of simplified natural forms. In this and related works, the artist developed a nontraditional technique: he manipulated charcoal with a rag, which he rubbed and wiped through a semidry charcoal wash. Painting a mixture of powdered charcoal and dilute black watercolor over pale washes, he wiped horizontal and circular marks to suggest rock formations. The charcoal particles in the wash clumped as the wash dried, leaving a gritty pattern as they settled into the valleys of the textured paper. Marin’s choice of a stepped frame enhances the dynamism of water washing across rocks.

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.