Thinking on Copper

As one of the most important American modernists of the twentieth century, John Marin distinguished himself as a graphic artist, excelling both as an etcher and a watercolorist. The museum’s unequalled collection of Marin’s etchings has been recently enriched by a gift from Norma Marin, the artist’s daughter-in-law, of seventy-one of the artist’s surviving copper plates.

This installation includes a variety of copper plates, trial proofs, and published prints Marin executed for ten separate projects dating from 1909 to 1948. A juxtaposition of a selection of twenty copper plates with examples of the etchings actually printed from them offers an unusual vantage-point for tracing the path of an artist's creative process.