“My chief interests in life; I am strong on houses and islands.” - John Marin

Beginning in 1914, Marin made annual trips to Maine from New Jersey, eventually purchasing property at Small Point. In the summer of 1922, Marin took his family to Stonington, a small village located on the southern part of Deer Isle. It would become an important subject for him. He wrote of Stonington, Maine: “this place of mine, a village, where clustered about you can see if you look dream houses of a purity of whiteness, of a loveliness of proportion, of a sparingness of sensitive detail, rising up out of the greenest of grass sward.”

Marin’s paintings of Stonington often presented either a distant view of the village crowded along the shore, with the sea and islands beyond, or isolated individual houses silhouetted against the water. His stylization of the village ranges from the abstract to more realistic renditions, with many works occupying a space between the two. He frequently used houses as a point of departure, featuring rectangular, geometric patterns while retaining their identity as houses. In this watercolor, Marin brings together different components of the coastal landscape within a pictorial space. Here, the architecture of the town along the roadside and the sea come together in loose strokes. The present work shows Main Street’s mixed-use buildings, including the market J. A. Gott at 15 Main Street, a one-stop shop for everything from produce to appliances.