The Derrick (Rockport Quarry)
Gabrielle de Veaux Clements American
Not on view
Men and oxen work together here to excavate and transport blocks of stone. The print was reproduced in "Harper's Monthly Magazine" in 1885, illustrating an article on granite quarrying at Gloucester, Massachusetts. Clements trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and then in Paris at the Académie Julien. She learned to etch from Stephen Parrish in a summer course taught on Cape Ann in 1883. This early example of the artist's work responds to a scene encountered in that area, where she later would establish a summer home on Folly Cove. The gritty character is unusual for Clements, whose etchings more usually record cityscapes or bucolic landscapes encountered along the East Coast of the United States or during her travels through Europe, Egypt and Algeria.
