Check out this fabulously salty, seafaring exhibition
AVERY, GOTTLIEB & ROTHKO: BY THE SEA
June 30 – September 27, 2026
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts
ABOUT
We recently had the pleasure of seeing a wonderful exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum: Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the Sea. Three major American artists. One remarkable friendship. And a whole lot of time spent along the New England coast. Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko met in New York around 1930 and quickly became friends. Over the following decades, they would make their way north to places like Gloucester, Rockport, and Provincetown, spending summers painting along the Massachusetts coast. You can almost picture it—renting cottages, setting up along the docks and shorelines, painting fishing boats, water, rocks and working harbors by day—then gathering in the evening to look at one another’s paintings, trade ideas and tell stories. Clam bakes, lobster pots, a few drinks… and probably plenty of heated critiques about color, composition and mood. The exhibition brings together a terrific selection of early, raw and gestural watercolors made on location, along with studio oils from the 1930s and ’40s, and larger, more expansive works from the mid-1950s. What I found especially fascinating was seeing the visual conversation between the three artists. The similarities in their early watercolors are striking — bold, loose, economical, and incredibly alive. You can see them experimenting, pushing, borrowing, questioning and gradually finding their own paths. Avery, who was eighteen years older than Gottlieb and Rothko, seems to have played an important role as both friend and mentor. But what makes this exhibition so interesting is that it doesn’t feel like a simple story of influence. It feels more like three artists learning from one another. In a way, these summers became their own informal art school. There’s something wonderful about that idea — three artists escaping New York, heading north to the coast, and spending long days looking, painting and talking about art. The paintings become a record not only of place, but of friendship, experimentation and growth. And that’s what made this exhibition feel different to me. You could feel the energy of their connection in the work.Before the monumental abstractions and the careers that would follow, there were these summers by the sea — boats in the harbor, shifting light, rough water, working docks, little cottages, and three painters figuring things out together.
Pretty good classroom.
- Eye Likey
Note: The writings below are transcribed directly from the exhibition walls. Enjoy!
AVERY, GOTTLIEB, AND ROTHKO, though often thought of as being in different artistic camps, formed a close bond during the early 1930s and were friends for the rest of their lives. Rothko and Gottlieb, both born in 1903 (Rothko in what is now Latvia and Gottlieb in New York City), were 18 years younger than Avery (who grew up in Hartford) and saw him as a mentor. In New York City, the trio often spent evenings together, drawing from a model and, following Avery's example, making sketches of one another. Gottlieb's sketches capture the essence of his friends-Avery drawing and Rothko playing the mandolin. Avery, in turn, made many drawings of Rothko, including one which led to the painted portrait seen here, which suggests the kind, inquisitive, and intellectual disposition of his friend. For Avery, Gottlieb, Rothko and their wives, time spent on Cape Ann included stretches of both work and leisure. Their daily routines consisted of mornings devoted to sketching en plein air, and afternoons were often devoted to the beach or sailing. Although Avery was well acquainted with the local art colony, having first visited the area in the early 1920s, he, Gottlieb and Rothko were not actively involved in it, forgoing the exhibits and fetes that characterized these groups during the 1930s and 1940s. There were encounters with other artists visiting the area including Barnett Newman, Vincent Spagna, Gershon Benjamin, and Aaron Siskind, but for Avery, Gottlieb, and Rothko, time spent on Cape Ann seems to have been largely about spending time together, discussing art, and advancing their work.
FOR AVERY, GOTTLIEB, ROTHKO, and the countless other artists who made their way to Cape Ann and Gloucester during the early 20th century, coming to the area was a rite of passage. Since the 1870s, Cape Ann's summer art colony had been steadily growing, attracting some of America's best known artists including Winslow Homer, Cecilia Beaux, Frank Duveneck, and John Sloan. By the 1920s, art teachers, critics and patrons congregated in East Gloucester and Rocky Neck, flocking to galleries and art associations, making the neighborhood the center of the colony. Avery was swept up by the excitement during his initial visits in the early 1920s, working alongside other well-established artists and showing his work in one of the newly organized art associations. When Avery was joined in 1932 by Gottlieb and Rothko, the trio shied away from much of the excitement of the art colony proper. Instead, they opted to explore the vertiginous and winding topography of East Gloucester, with its jigsaw rooftops and luminous reflections which inspired countless drawings and watercolors. Working from the vantage point of their lodgings near Banner Hill, the three artists found many and varied views to capture in their work.
Summers together offered the three artists a sustained opportunity to work side-by-side, with Avery presumably taking the lead and each artist enjoying important periods of self-discovery. Working on paper was at the heart of their endeavors; in fact, looking back on the period, Sally Michel Avery wrote that summers were: Devoted to works on paper. They traveled well, took up little room, were adaptable to small working space. One could combine water coloring with going to the beach, picnicking, playing badminton. Inspired by the place and by each other, Avery, Gottlieb, and Rothko sketched from the same vantage points and experimented with various techniques including the use of watercolors and gouache on colored paper. At the end of the day, they came together to compare what they had done and review each other's work. From Sally Michel Avery we know that drawings and watercolors made during the summer served as the basis for Milton Avery's paintings created back in his New York City studio.
Sally & Milton sketching away.
WHILE THE MUCH-HERALDED ERA of fishing under sail was quickly passing as the industry moved into the modern age, Gloucester Harbor retained much of the color and authenticity that had fascinated artists for generations. Gill nets laced out over wooden reels for mending and to dry; anchors, barrels, and other pieces of gear left on a dock; and acres and acres of flake yards where salted fish was set out to dry under long sheets of white cloth. These everyday scenes, as well as the backdrop of Gloucester's skyline, attracted all three artists. Avery, Gottlieb, and Rothko each explored Gloucester's working waterfront and its beaches, capturing them first in sketches and later in watercolor, gouache, and oil. For Avery, many of these subjects-the sea, boats, birds, and bathers-became enduring favorites. During his earliest visits, Avery worked in oil out of doors in an impressionist style, training his eye on the sea and sky, the near and far, and the light unique to Cape Ann. Gottlieb seemed particularly fascinated with Gloucester's working waterfront, making numerous studies of fish-processing activities and the gear associated with various branches of the fishing industry. Rothko too spent time around the city's wharves and Inner Harbor, capturing everyday scenes in watercolor and gouache. While many of the motifs discovered around Gloucester Harbor would continue to appear in Gottlieb's work in coming years, they soon disappeared from Rothko's.
Sally & Milton checking out some fresh watercolors from the morning
LATE WORKS
BY THE TIME Avery, Gottlieb and Rothko found each other in Provincetown in the late 1950s they all were making large-scale paintings. Hoisting six-foot canvases into his upper-story studio on Commercial Street, Avery, for the first time worked on large oil paintings in his summertime location. Distilling the image to its essence all three artists focused on evoking universal truths. To see the late paintings of the "close-knit trio" together is to grasp in the work of all three a response to space, to near and far, flatness and dimensionality, to ocean depths, to sun and moon-an elemental expression of polarities. While the starting point for Gottlieb and Rothko had become conceptual, for Avery it remained in the visible world no matter how reduced or simplified. Yet the example set by Avery, his unerring sense of color and his ability to compose and to simplify had offered a valuable foundation for both younger artists. With his emphasis on color, form, and composition, Avery opened the door to future generations of artists and to new ways of engaging the viewer.
BUY BOOK @ the Cape Ann museum store
Notes:
The museum gallery was unusually dark, which made photographing the work a bit of a challenge. The iPhone’s slow shutter speeds were, well… not exactly our friends. These are the best shots we could get at the time. All of the images are completely unedited. We wanted to leave them just as they were and, hopefully, give you a little feeling of what it was like to be there with us. Honestly, we really needed our good friend and artist Alan Ota with us. His fancy professional high-def camera would have captured everything beautifully. Unfortunately, Alan was down in Alabama this morning, shooting the city. We also wish our friends and kindred spirits, artists Michael Robertson and Randall Slaughter, could have been here. They would have absolutely loved this show. But, they were somewhere in Cleveland, enjoying Lake Erie.
So, we dedicate this post to all three of them. Cheers Fellas!
