Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the Sea

Preview: written before the show opened

In 1932 Milton Avery, then 47, invited two younger painters, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, to Gloucester, Massachusetts. This show follows the friendship that grew from those shared summers, in around 90 paintings, watercolors, drawings and sketches from the 1920s to the mid-1960s. Several have never been shown publicly.

Sixteen museums lent to it, and the National Gallery of Art sent ten Rothko works. WBUR's report on the Cape Ann showing named Rothko's 1934 beach scene of bathers and Gottlieb's Boxes on the Beach among the early pieces. The Phillips promotes Avery's Black Sea (1959), a seascape in flat bands of colour. The arc runs from harbour sketches and figures to colour-drenched canvases.

It is included with general admission and free for members, who get preview days on 22 and 23 October. Three painters sharing a summer by the water is the Rehoboth group house, with better paintings and no one fighting over the one bathroom.