Rockport’s trade mark is the dark red shack on a Bearskin Neck wharf. “Motif No. 1” is recognized in far-away places, thanks not only to visitors who spread its fame, but to the innumerable paintings and prints that have carried its likeness abroad. One story says that a Yankee traveling in South America found a picture of the house: it had been painted in Czechoslovakia. He brought it to his home in New Hampshire.
As we have noted, America’s most-painted building received its name in an impulsive exclamation by Lester Hornby. This illustrator and etcher taught in Paris in the winter; his pupils, in the French manner, drew certain standard subjects or motifs.
