It happens often as you drive around Cape Ann, the rocky headland jutting into the Atlantic 30 miles north of Boston. You round a corner or crest a hill and wham! — suddenly you’ve driven into a painting. It’s something about the way the light refracts off the ocean on all sides, making ship masts and fish shacks seem to glow from within. It’s something about the natural beauty of the water crashing onto the granite. But most of all, it’s about the power of suggestion — since artists have painted Cape Ann so often, there’s barely an inch of it that hasn’t been memorialized in oil or watercolor, making a visit seem a kind of perpetual scenic d’j’ vu.

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http://www.yankeemagazine.com/issues/2007-05/travel/capeann/all

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