Alfred Cohen: An American Artist in Europe - Between Figuration and Abstraction

Cohen was frequently drawn to small ports as a subject, sheltered by cliffs, hills, or harbour walls. Here, the row of small buildings along the seafront echoes the line of cliffs in which it nestles. As the artist Alice White has noted, a work like this shows Cohen as a 'process painter' - one who makes the working of the paint visible, not just where he's used brush or palette knife, but even using the end of the brush-handle to score the sunlight breaking through the cloud over the ridge of the cliffs. He even leaves what looks, intriguingly, like a thumb-print on the top right-hand cliff.