Only a small number of drawings and watercolours were produced during Lyonel Feininger’s initial, post-German phase in the USA. It would be two years before his first American oil paintings appeared. The Jagged Reef depicts a sailing vessel – a typical motif for the artist. Ships had already played a role in his German work and, indeed, vessels, cities and the sea were among his preferred themes in both his German and American-produced art. Many of the images he created in the USA contained aspects of the Germany he was forced to abandon. His memories of a familiar German environment resurfaced in watercolours, oil paintings and woodcuts. However, his world of images was expanded in America to include the monumental architecture around him, namely the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

On September 26, 1939 he completed work on The Jagged Reef, one of a series of watercolours he produced after 1936. The compositional basis of the work was a pen and ink drawing, over which Feininger added his typical, prismatically-fragmented pictorial elements. Paint was then added afterwards. Feininger never used watercolours alone but rather in conjunction with pen and India ink. His ship motif was particularly dominant between 1938 and 1939. During that period he created two mural paintings for the New York World’s Fair: one for the Marine Transportation Building, another for the Masterpieces of Art Building.