Excerpt from Artists of the Rockport Art Association: A Pictorial Record of the Oldest Art Organization of Cape Ann; With an Historical Sketch of the Rockport Art Colony by Harrison Cady, and Reproductions of Works in the Graphic Arts by Several Active Members

On Flake Point, at the end of the Neck, cod and pollock were drying, and in a quaint and shadowy blacksmith shop, a stalwart smith was busily engaged in forging an anchor.

Fishermen were everywhere at their work, for the Neck at that time was not the place of residence it since has become - its only resident then being an elderly Portuguese fisherman, John Silva, whose close cropped chin whiskers and tiny loop earrings of gold were later to adorn my sketch book. From a nearby ship yard I could hear the sounds of the calkers' hammers mingling with the shrill cries of the sea gulls soaring overhead.

Beside an inner dock lay two bulky stone sloops awaiting orders, and off shore another with enormous spread of canvas was tacking slowly southward, its dark hull weighted deep in the sea with a mighty cargo of granite just loaded at the quarries in Pigeon Cove.

Looking to my right a rugged headland rose boldly. Its great faces of rock glowing in ambers and ochres, while seawards an answering wall of stone marked the cap of an unfinished break water. I remember well how that wondrous day did not end its un folding joy until the coming of dusk and the twilight faded and as a fitting end to those first hours of discovery I walked the winding coast guard path downshore in time to see the great beacons on Thatchers' send their first gleams into the night. Then returning under the starlight to my night's slumbers, to be ended only when the crowing of the Rockport roosters heralded the coming of another day.

Looking backward through the dim pages of history, it is quite impossible to determine who was the first artist to visit the Cape. As one's mind wanders through those early records, it seems quite possible that some hardy member of the adventurous crews of those early explorers of the Cape - Samuel de Champlain in 1606, or the sturdy Captain John Smith in 1614 - may have been blessed with the eyes of an artist. Being keen in perception of natural beauty it is not too much to imagine that while boats were being repaired in some sandy cove, he may have strayed away from his fellows for a brief moment: that he set down roughly some remind ing lines of the haunting beauty of Cape Anne (as it was named by Prince Charles in honor of his mother, Anne of Denmark, wife of James the first) and that he carried them back to Merrie England, where, in lofty paneled hall or humble cottage he might picture to his enchanted listeners those memories of a Faire Cape in the far New World. A land sweet with the perfume of wild rose and bay berry, of white magnolias and far reaches of marsh and forest. Yea, truly a faire land of indescribable beauty. But it well may be that history does not disclose such a one and so we must leave the first artist of Cape Ann undiscovered and with a toast to his mem ory, pass on.

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