Lot Note:

Sotter is identified so closely with the rural villages and moonlit snowfields of Bucks County that Windy Day, Cape Ann offers a welcome counterpoint. The subject is the Massachusetts coast, and the picture turns on a contrast between the two halves of the canvas. Below the horizon, russet ledges tilt steeply into the foreground, their faceted planes picked out in ochre and rust, while the water breaks around them in cold teal and bottle green, flecked with quick strokes of white. Above, the sky takes up well over half the picture, and Sotter gives it his full attention. Great bands of cloud, violet at their undersides and creamy at their crests, sweep across the canvas in long, directional strokes, parting just above the horizon to admit a low seam of pale light. Against that opening, a schooner and a scattering of smaller sails stand out as slight silhouettes, which measures the scale of the weather overhead.

The nocturnes for which Sotter is best known depend on enclosure–on the sheltering hill and the lit window. In Windy Day, Cape Ann the view is open and the light is mutable, and the eye is sent out to sea rather than drawn in toward a hearth. Even so, the picture shows the same habits at work: a firmly built composition, a palette organized around a few related hues, and an assured touch that lets the paint describe rock and cloud alike. Cape Ann, with its granite shoreline and its long tradition as a gathering place for American painters, held a lasting attraction for Sotter, and the canvas shows an artist applying his command of color and structure to a coast he had come to know intimately.

Framed: 30 5/8 x 36 1/2 x 2 in.

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