This watercolor was almost certainly made in Gloucester, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1934, when Rothko and his wife Edith Sachar (1912–1981) vacationed there with the Averys—Milton (1885–1965), Sally, and March—and Esther and Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974). Rothko rented a house on Calder Street, East Gloucester, about half a mile from the working wharfs of Smith Cove in Gloucester Harbor, the center of the city’s gill-net fishing industry (fig. 1). The number assigned during Rothko’s inventory of 1968/1969 erroneously signifies a creation date of 1925–1927.
1. Arthur Rothstein, Dock at Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1937, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF34- 025940-D.