JOHN MARIN
Quartier de la Maison Blanche.

Etching on Japan paper, 1907. 130x180 mm; 5¼x7¼ inches, full margins. Edition of approximately only 12. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. A superb, dark impression of this extremely scarce, early etching.

Marin (1870-1953) left New York for Paris in the summer of 1905, overlapping with Edward Hopper's own visits there at the time, when the city was under the influence of Late Impressionism and the Fauves were dominating the avant-garde scene (Hopper left for Paris in October 1906 and returned to New York in August 1907). Marin exhibited at the Salone d'Automne several times, along with works by Henri Matisse, Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, as well as alongside the 1907 Paul Cézanne retrospective. Though surrounded by the excitement of the center of the art world, Marin's main influence at this time period was the artist James A. M. Whistler (1834-1903). In his European prints, before returning to New York, Marin emulated Whistler's high career, looser style of etching, which he had honed during his 1879-80 stay in Venice (Marin even selected similar vantage points as those used by Whistler in Venice). Zigrosser 78.