Lot Essay
Feininger had a lifelong fascination for ships, inspired by his childhood spent playing by the shores of the Hudson and the East River. In a letter written in 1937, the year in which he painted Four-masted Marque, Feininger recalled, "the waterfront of Manhattan was a magnificent spectacle: tall ships, forests of masts and yards, long slanting-up bowsprits, reaching from above fantastic figureheads right across West Street almost to the buildings opposite, stood side by side for many hundreds of yards along the shore. The Hudson, the East River, each crawled with sailing sloops, schooners, brigs, ships and paddlewheel steamers" (in a letter to Theodore Spicer-Simpson, see H. Hess, op. cit., pp. 2-3).
Feininger had returned from Germany to his native New York with his family in 1937, the years when Four-masted Marque was painted. Hess lists only nine oils for this year and observes of Feininger's paintings of 1936 and 1937, "In his paintings he was concerned with isolated objects in space. They are real objects, painted in solid planes, more removed than ever before in his work. In these pictures Feininger's extension of spatial depth has been abandoned; a flat pattern of broad bands of color serves for the definition of planes" (H. Hess, op. cit., p. 131).
Feininger had returned from Germany to his native New York with his family in 1937, the years when Four-masted Marque was painted. Hess lists only nine oils for this year and observes of Feininger's paintings of 1936 and 1937, "In his paintings he was concerned with isolated objects in space. They are real objects, painted in solid planes, more removed than ever before in his work. In these pictures Feininger's extension of spatial depth has been abandoned; a flat pattern of broad bands of color serves for the definition of planes" (H. Hess, op. cit., p. 131).