Get your oil paints and easel set up to create your own interpretation of the fishing shack that holds claim as the most painted structure in the US. This New England beauty known as Motif #1 perches on the edge of the pier at Rockport, Massachusetts, and has appeared in numerous portraits, movies and more.
What makes Motif #1 so special? First, it’s an interesting shape as it’s a long shed connected to a tower oriented to a different direction, all crafted of red wooden boards with steep, pitched roof lines. Perhaps artists and photographers are drawn to the contrast as the red shack sits on gray stones with multiple ladders reaching down into the water; perhaps it’s the color study with dark bay waters of Bearskin Neck and the rows of multicolored buoys hung on its flank. Add in a cloudy day and the ambiance is painterly and reminiscent of an older time.
According to Rockport’s website, which has an illustration of the shack as its logo, the name Motif #1 arose out of a frustrated exclamation from Lester Hornby, an American painter with ties to Paris who was a vital part of Rockport’s artist colony at the turn of the century. A motif is a repeated idea in a work of art, and after noticing how many of his students chose to paint the structure, he commented, ‘What — Motif No. 1 again?!’
The small shack has been featured on a 34 cent US postal stamp and recreated in small scale for the 1933 World’s Fair parade where it won ‘best historic float.’ As reported by the New England Historical Society, it’s been on magazine covers, in a Winston cigarette ad and on a Kentucky bourbon bottle. And if you look closely while watching Disney’s Finding Nemo, you’ll see a painting of it in the dentist’s office.
Besides legions of local colony artists, painters Aldro Thompson Hibbard, Harry Aiken Vincent and John Buckley have captured the shack on canvas. Buckley lived in it for a time and sold it to the town in 1945. Today’s structure is a rebuild of the original 1840 shack which was demolished in the 1978 blizzard. The savvy town of Rockport covers it in a paint that aims to look weather beaten even when freshly applied.
The pandemic has once again canceled the annual May festival held for the shack, called Motif No. 1 Day, which typically involves a short film festival, poetry slams, live music, dance performances, a 5K run, and yes... lots of arts in progress and for sale. This year, in hopes of next year, you can buy a limited edition commemorative poster showing the shack being overtaken by octopus tentacles from the water and reading, ‘Help Us Save Motif No. 1 Day.’