Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1623–1923

The dates 1623 and 1923 seen on a small flag flying in the left foreground, together with the name "Gloucester" on the bow of a two-masted saling ship, indicate that this print celebrates the three hundreth anniversary of the arrival of the first European colonists to that Massachusetts town. Clements had long associations with the surrounding peninsula of Cape Ann, learning to etch there at summer classes taught by Stephen Parish in 1883, the returning as a mature artist to Folly Cove. She pursued a career that encompassed oil and mural painting and etching. During the World War I period, she spent Winters in Charleston, South Carolina contributing to the Charleston Renaissance that transformed the city into a cultural center. Teaching art at the Bryn Mawr School between 1895 and 1908, Clements experimented with color etching and aquatint and employed those techniques here in a print whose narrow vertical format demonstrates her interest in Japanese woodblocks. By including an old sailing ship, contemporary workers in a harbor, she celebrates Gloucester's signficance as a port throughout its long history.