Alfred Stieglitz's gallery 291 opened Recent water colors by John Marin in New York. The exhibition came late in the life of 291, after the gallery had helped shift American modernism from pictorial photography toward experimental painting, sculpture, and works on paper. Marin had been part of Stieglitz's circle for years, and recurring exhibitions at 291 helped frame his watercolors as modernist statements rather than secondary studies. The January 1916 show was followed that season by exhibitions of Abraham Walkowitz, Paul Strand, Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe, indicating how compactly 291 was presenting the core of an emerging American avant-garde before it closed in 1917.
The show reinforced Marin's place in the Stieglitz circle and in early American modernism.
