…Beginning in the early 1930s, three Americans—Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb—began spending summers together on Cape Ann, along the coast of northeast Massachusetts. They loved the gritty authenticity of Gloucester, the nation’s oldest fishing port. Cape Ann’s distinctive, undulant geography combined pungent industry and village intensity with Atlantic immensity of sea and sky. The story of the relationships among these artists, in particular between the older Avery and the now–stratospherically famous Rothko, shows us American modernism in its moment of greatest transition…
Image: Milton Avery, Eclipse Watchers, c. 1932
Watercolor on paper
15 x 22 in
Private collection
Jeremy Lawson Photography
© 2026 The Milton Avery Trust / Artists RightsSociety (ARS), New York
Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the Sea at Cape Ann Museum until 27 September 2026
