Harbor View with Shipwrecked Hull,

1927

For Avery, modern art meant a revolution in the use of color as form in painting, liberated from the contours of drawing. Throughout the 1920s, he spent many summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, often painting the coasts, boats, and people of this small fishing community and artists’ colony. Probably painted there, this view belongs to a group of gouaches created by the artist in bold calligraphic strokes of pure color on black construction paper. With these works, Avery developed a distinctive way of painting by scumbling thin layers of bright color over darker grounds, a technique he would use often during the rest of his career.