MOTIF NO. 1 ROCKPORT, MA

MOTIF NO. 1  ROCKPORT, MA

8X8 oil on gessobord
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You may wonder about the title but if you are an art aficionado, you need read no further.  Starting in the 19th century, Cape Ann, which includes Rockport, Gloucester and other quaint towns, has been host to many of the very best, most celebrated artists in America.  A few of those include the great Winslow Homer; impressionists Childe Hassam and John H. Twachtman; and modernists Edward Hopper and Marsden Hartley.

Perhaps the best symbol of the legacy created by the migration of artists might be the small red lobstermen's shack located at the end of a wharf in Rockport, built around the time of the Civil War.  I painted the "shack" as it looks today, but in the 19th century only the right end comprised the building.

In the early 1930's, while critiquing a group of students' paintings, several of which featured the little red shack, Lester Hornby, using a term often employed by French students to describe frequently painted sites,  exclaimed, "What---Motif No.1  again!"  His fateful words stuck and since then the little red shack has been referred to as "Motif No. 1"

Seascapes are very appealing to me and recently I have painted several.  I will soon post them here. Many more will come as I count down the months until I can spend two weeks in coastal Maine, Andrew Wyeth country.