On the art colony that complicates, beautifies, and enriches our narratives
of Gloucester and the past.
Much of my argument in yesterday’s post, or at least much of my final point
about why we don’t better remember Gloucester’s longterm histories, depended on
the city’s identity as a predominantly working—and thus working class—community.
But of course no place—and certainly no place in America—is as uniform or
simple as that, and Gloucester is no exception. I’m sure there would be plenty
of ways to complicate such narratives of Gloucester’s working class identity, to
highlight other histories and communities that have contributed to the city’s
story as it has unfolded over nearly four hundred years; but the easiest
complication to spot is located directly across the harbor, on the beautiful
peninsula known as Rocky
Neck: the Rocky Neck Art Colony.
The Art Colony’s
history dates back to at least the early 19th century, when
local painter Fitz Henry Lane (long
misidentified as Fitz Hugh Lane) began to capture Gloucester’s landscapes, cityscapes,
and ships in a unique style that came to be known as Luminism. As the
Colony attracted
additional artists over the subsequent century—most famously Winslow Homer
for a time, but also Frank Duveneck, John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, and
many others—it continued to be defined by a close relationship between
Gloucester’s images and these artistic ones. That is, while of course such artists
were drawn to the area and colony because of that legacy and supportive
community of other artistic presences and relationships, they were also clearly
drawn (as their
works consistently reflected) to the city’s natural and manmade beauties
and views, making the art colony truly inseparable from Gloucester’s overall
and evolving identity and histories.
The Art Colony is alive and vibrant into the 21st century, with
numerous galleries in which (as this AmericanStudier can attest) you’re likely
to meet the artists themselves, if not indeed to catch them at work. Because of
that continuity, a visit to Rocky Neck, particularly if we can do so informed
by the place’s longer term histories and community (which I confess I was not
prior to my visit), becomes a kind of intimate historical interpretation, a way
in which we can inhabit what the place has long been and meant. Too often,
historic sites in America are explicitly separated from the present places and
life around them, treated as a monuments rather than as a living and evolving
part of their communities; Rocky Neck Art Colony is impossible to treat in that
way, and demands instead that we engage with both past and present, and all the
artists and images that they contain.
Next Gloucester story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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