Books: The Literary Life

Motif No. 1 is the name U.S. artists (aping a French custom) give to a 75-year-old fish shack at the end of a wharf in Rockport, Mass. Motif No. 1 is probably the No. 1 U.S. art subject. It has been watercolored, oiled, gouached, penciled, etched, lithographed, photographed. Last month, by a publisher’s inadvertence, Motif No. 1 turned up on the jacket of Mary Heaton Vorse’s Time and the Town (TIME, July 20), a chronicle of Provincetown, Rockport’s rival art colony. Rockport was outraged.

Aldro T. Hibbard, president of Rockport’s Art Association, wired the Dial Press: “I was shocked to the camel-haired bristles of my paintbrush. . . . We of Rockport colony have always looked upon Provincetown as a weak sister in the field of art and this theft of our most sacred subject is a confession that the little village is minus a house suitable to be reproduced in the book by Mrs. Vorse.”

Wired Artist John M. Buckley, who has owned Motif No. 1 for the past 13 years: “Motif No. 1 is my personal studio. Therefore I join others in the Rockport colony in vigorous protest. In fact, I think I will see my lawyer.”

Wired the Dial Press: “Is there anything we can do?” In a public apology the Press said: “The company hopes it hasn’t offended the good people of Rockport . . . also hopes it hasn’t offended the good people of Provincetown.” Then the publishers commissioned Motif-Owner Buckley to paint a Provincetown scene for the jacket of its third edition of Time and the Town. Sniggering Provincetowners wondered whether he would have a studio to finish it in. Reason: battered by decades of New England wind & weather, Motif No. 1 was reported last week to be collapsing. With red paint and linseed oil, 30 Rockport artists were trying to save the shed without spoiling its antique finish.