Artworks

As an American artist’s colony, Gloucester had been important since the mid nineteenth century. Artists who worked there included the Luminist painter Fitz Henry Lane – a native of Gloucester – Winslow Homer, John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Marsden Hartley, and Milton Avery. Avery spent numerous summers in Gloucester on Cape Ann between 1920 and 1945, and during the early 1930s, was there along with Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, and Barnett Newman. In 1924, he also met his future wife there, fellow-artist Sally Michel. In later interviews Sally recalled that she and Avery had rented neighbouring sail lofts, where they were living and working that summer. Recalling their early Gloucester summers, she said, “He used to go out in the morning. At that time, he did all of his painting out of doors, I mean directly from the scene. And he would strap his easel and his canvas on his back and he’d walk out to the rocks, the rocky shore of Gloucester and paint two pictures in the morning, then he’d come home and have his lunch and after lunch, he’d do the same thing… So he would usually paint… three or four pictures every day.” Ten Pound Island marks the entrance to Gloucester’s Inner Harbor, and was the site of a lighthouse, where Winslow Homer stayed and painted in 1880. The Island and many other Cape Ann motifs appear in repeatedly Avery’s work from the period – beachgoers, fishing boats and schooners, Tarr’s Wharf, Gorton’s Fishery, the boatyards and docks, Rockport quarries, Salt Island, Eastern Point, Good Harbor Half Moon, Niles, and Raymond’s beaches. “Avery’s 'Ten Pound Island' was painted in 1956, a decade or so after he stopped summering on Cape Ann. …Simplifying its form and setting it apart from all man-made structures, Avery frees 'Ten Pound Island' from considerations of scale. These shapes could be miniscule or the size of continent – his image permits both readings and all of those which fall between. It’s tempting to assume that Avery’s distance from the Harbor, the need to rely on memory, is what opens this painting to infinite possibilities. Yet all is not wide open. Color, once again, is specific to the place. Avery draws warmth from nearly every scene – certainly from this one – yet there is a harsh New England chill to be felt in the summery greens of the Harbor waves.” Carter Ratciff, The Gloucester Years (1982)