AFA Autumn 2021

Antiques & Fine Art 49 2021 Fig. 2: Eric Hudson (1864–1932), Boats, Rockport, n.d. Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches. Rockport Art Association & Museum Permanent Collection. hovers around fifty. Small lobster boats dot its tiny harbor. Dramatic Cathedral Woods is the chief interior attraction. On the east, sheer cliffs rise from the sea foam and dramatically crashing waves to heights unmatched anywhere along the coast. Cape Ann is markedly different. The area embraces two developed urban centers, Gloucester and Rockport. Gloucester, with a population of about 30,000, has many picturesque spires, architect-designed buildings, such as the bristling brick City Hall, and an industrially active waterfront, with a fish processing plant, and a harbor that bustles with the coming and going of seafaring boats. Its cultural center is the Cape Ann Museum. A short four miles away is the village of Rockport, once noted for its stone quarries, vestiges of which, now swimming holes, dot the largely wooded landscape. The Rockport Art Association and Museum is the center of artistic life. Monhegan Island and Cape Ann, one hundred sea miles apart, have attracted many of the same artists during the course of more than a century. Painters, and some printmakers and sculptors, began to appear after the Civil War. A group of New Yorkers led by Robert Henri first went to Monhegan in 1903. Over the next