John Marin's Full Moon Over the City, No. 1

 

Schoelkopf Gallery is pleased to share the details on John Marin's Full Moon Over the City, No. 1, executed in 1949. Full Moon Over the City, No. 1 belongs to a pair of paintings John Marin produced in 1949 of a New York City night scene. The present work is the first of only two examples of this subject Marin painted that year and likely served as Marin's model in developing the second version of the composition, Full Moon Over the City, No. 2. Notably, he used experimental tools such as syringes to create varied textures across the surface of this work.

John Marin, Full Moon Over the City, No. 1, 1949, Oil on canvas, 22⅛ x 28⅛ inches

In the foreground, a dense field of deconstructed shapes evokes urban buildings, while thin calligraphic lines suggest a bridge. Across the river, these same thin lines and rust-colored geometric forms create a visual echo of the emerging New York City skyline. The low-hanging blood moon, which occurs during a lunar eclipse, is reminiscent of the striking black suns in Manhattan Marin painted in the late 1920s and early 1930s during his iconic New York period. Full Moon Over the City, No. 1 also recalls the vivid red moon and gesturally rendered river in  Claude Monet's celebrated Impression, soleil levant (1872; Musée Marmottan Monet), the namesake of the Impressionist movement. Full Moon Over the City, No. 1 reveals Marin's important position in the evolution of modernism as both rooted in the approach of one of the earliest and most lauded modern masters and also as a distinct synthesis of the post-war moment in New York.