Nephosthe weather behind the paintings

The painting is not reproduced here because permission to publish its image has not been established.

Explore the Huntsville Museum of Art collection

Edna W. Lawrence, Rockport Harbor, c. 1930. Oil on canvas, 20 × 24 inches. Huntsville Museum Association Purchase, 2008 – Sellars Collection, 2018.03.

A study against the weather record

Edna W. Lawrence

Rockport Harbor

Likely Rockport, Massachusetts · About 1930 · Huntsville Museum of Art, 2018.03

Boats and broken reflections, but no documented season. What survives in the local weather records around this approximate date?

3years considered separately: 1929, 1930 and 1931. All twelve months are included; the picture is not assigned to summer.

Season unknownPainted day unknown

The recordsThe holding museum

The Nephos method

How this study was read

The method in full

  1. What is written

    The museum dates the painting to about 1930. Natalie Mead identifies its subject as likely Rockport, Massachusetts. No month, season, dated visit or painting day is documented.

  2. Records of those days

    • Rockport 1 ESE, USC001969779 complete monthly temperature means out of 36 months considered in 1929–1931. Each station and year stays separate; gaps are shown.
    • East Gloucester, USC0019215017 complete monthly temperature means out of 36 months considered in 1929–1931. Each station and year stays separate; gaps are shown.

    Not found or not yet searched

    • The approximate date is not a bounded making interval. The place identification remains qualified as likely.
    • The catalogue thumbnail supplies no secure season. Summer-colony history does not date Lawrence’s visit.
    • No exact viewpoint, dated weather witness, outdoor session or account of studio changes is established.

  3. Each claim tested

    • Does the harbour scene establish summer? Unknown. Nephos reads boats and reflections but no decisive seasonal cue. All twelve months are considered.
    • What survives near the approximate date? Rockport supplies 9 complete monthly means; East Gloucester supplies 17. Incomplete months and all annual means remain blank.
    • Do the records verify the painted light? No. High–low temperature midpoints cannot measure reflected light, cloud, wind, tide or the weather of an unidentified day.

  4. Verdict

    A harbour scene with an approximate date can be placed beside local monthly records, but neither its season nor its painted sky is established.

    • UnknownThe painted season, day and sky No dated session or secure seasonal cue connects the scene to an observation.
    • UnknownWhat Lawrence changed No object-specific making evidence has been established.

What this cannot tell you. All twelve calendar months in three separate years surrounding about 1930. Analytical context, not documentary bounds or a summer attribution. Each station and month separately: mean of daily (TMAX + TMIN) / 2 only if every calendar day has both readings and blank NOAA quality flags. No infilling, pooled stations or pooled years. Same-calendar-month ranks use all complete months in each station file, unrounded, with ties sharing rank. No homogenization. Station coordinates are catalogue positions. Historical exposures and long-term instrument comparability have not been verified; ranks describe retained archive values, not a climate trend. Neither station covers a 1991–2020 reference. No modern station is spliced in. PRCP retained with flags for audit; no precipitation totals, rainless-day counts or wetness ranks are published. Presumed-zero amounts are rejected. No artwork reproduction is published; the supplied catalogue thumbnail was inspected for research only.

Step 1 · The painting and its place

A harbour, an approximate date

Edna W. Lawrence’s Rockport Harbor is an oil on canvas, 20 × 24 inches, in the Huntsville Museum of Art, accession 2018.03. The museum’s catalogue card dates it to about 1930 and credits a Huntsville Museum Association Purchase, 2008 – Sellars Collection. The museum’s travelling exhibition checklist confirms its title, medium and dimensions.

Natalie Mead, the museum’s chief curator, writes: The painting likely depicts Rockport, Massachusetts, and dates to around 1930. (email to the author, 19 October 2026). The word likely matters. This study follows that place identification without claiming a precise viewpoint or a documented visit.

RISD’s account dates Lawrence’s drawing teaching there to 1922 and describes extensive travels. It does not date a Rockport stay. The Rockport Art Association & Museum describes artists spending summers in Bearskin Neck studios by 1900. That history places the subject within an established art colony; it does not make this canvas a summer painting.

Nephos’s visual reading, not a museum description: the privately supplied catalogue thumbnail shows boats, waterfront buildings and pale broken reflections on the water. The small view supplies no decisive seasonal cue. Boats and reflective water alone do not establish a month, wind speed, cloud cover or the temperature of the air. The thumbnail is not reproduced here.

The comparison uses all twelve months in each of 1929, 1930 and 1931. These are three years around the approximate catalogue date, kept separate. They are an analytical choice, not earliest and latest possible dates for making the painting. No object-specific account establishes whether Lawrence worked outdoors, from sketches or later in a studio.

Step 2 · What survives nearby

The gaps belong in the comparison

Rockport 1 ESE supplies 9 complete monthly temperature means out of 36 months considered. East Gloucester supplies 17. Its file begins in 1930, so it contributes no readings for the first comparison year. Neither station supplies a complete calendar year in this span; no annual mean is assigned.

Each monthly mean averages the midpoint of the daily high and low. Every day must have both readings and pass NOAA’s quality checks. One missing or rejected reading leaves the monthly mean blank. East Gloucester stays a separate record; it never supplies a missing Rockport observation.

Complete temperature months, not a count of sunny or paintable months
YearRockport 1 ESEEast GloucesterAnnual mean
19295 / 120 / 12Incomplete at both stations
19301 / 128 / 12Incomplete at both stations
19313 / 129 / 12Incomplete at both stations

Step 3 · Read the months separately

A local record, with its missing months visible

The chart keeps each station separate and breaks the line wherever a complete month is unavailable. It also breaks between years. A gap is an unknown monthly mean, not a cold month. The table supplies the complete values, usable-day counts and same-calendar-month ranks.

Rockport’s file spans 1902–1983; East Gloucester’s spans 1930–1946. Rank 1 is coolest among that station’s complete instances of the same calendar month. Ranks compare unrounded means, allow shared ranks for ties, and describe the retained archive; they are not a homogenized climate trend or evidence for choosing one painting year over another.

Monthly temperature records near Rockport, 1929–1931Separate Rockport and East Gloucester monthly means of daily high–low midpoints, degrees Fahrenheit. Only complete months are plotted. Gaps are missing readings, not zero temperatures. The table gives every value and completeness count.203040506070Monthly mean · °FJan1929AprJulOctJan1930AprJulOctJan1931AprJulOctRockport 1 ESERockport 1 ESE · 1929-01: 27.3 °F / -2.6 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1929-02: 31.0 °F / -0.6 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1929-03: 39.9 °F / 4.4 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1929-07: 70.0 °F / 21.1 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1929-10: 52.2 °F / 11.2 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1930-01: 31.4 °F / -0.3 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1931-07: 68.5 °F / 20.3 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1931-08: 68.1 °F / 20.0 °CRockport 1 ESE · 1931-11: 47.4 °F / 8.5 °CEast GloucesterEast Gloucester · 1930-04: 44.0 °F / 6.7 °CEast Gloucester · 1930-05: 55.6 °F / 13.1 °CEast Gloucester · 1930-06: 67.8 °F / 19.9 °CEast Gloucester · 1930-07: 69.2 °F / 20.7 °CEast Gloucester · 1930-08: 67.1 °F / 19.5 °CEast Gloucester · 1930-10: 49.6 °F / 9.8 °CEast Gloucester · 1930-11: 40.8 °F / 4.9 °CEast Gloucester · 1930-12: 31.0 °F / -0.6 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-03: 36.4 °F / 2.4 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-04: 45.9 °F / 7.7 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-05: 54.8 °F / 12.7 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-06: 63.4 °F / 17.4 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-07: 69.2 °F / 20.7 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-08: 68.3 °F / 20.2 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-09: 63.4 °F / 17.5 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-10: 53.8 °F / 12.1 °CEast Gloucester · 1931-12: 33.7 °F / 0.9 °C
Monthly means of daily high–low temperature midpoints, 1929–1931. Solid blue: Rockport 1 ESE. Dashed red: East Gloucester. Only complete months are plotted.
Every month: values, gaps and same-month ranks
Incomplete months give usable high–low pairs out of calendar days. Ranks are coolest first within each station’s complete same-month archive.
MonthRockport 1 ESEEast Gloucester
January 192927.3 °F / -2.6 °C; rank 20/50Incomplete: 0/31 days
February 192931.0 °F / -0.6 °C; rank 39/51Incomplete: 0/28 days
March 192939.9 °F / 4.4 °C; rank 48/51Incomplete: 0/31 days
April 1929Incomplete: 29/30 daysIncomplete: 0/30 days
May 1929Incomplete: 28/31 daysIncomplete: 0/31 days
June 1929Incomplete: 0/30 daysIncomplete: 0/30 days
July 192970.0 °F / 21.1 °C; rank 33/51Incomplete: 0/31 days
August 1929Incomplete: 30/31 daysIncomplete: 0/31 days
September 1929Incomplete: 28/30 daysIncomplete: 0/30 days
October 192952.2 °F / 11.2 °C; rank 24/49Incomplete: 0/31 days
November 1929Incomplete: 25/30 daysIncomplete: 0/30 days
December 1929Incomplete: 28/31 daysIncomplete: 0/31 days
January 193031.4 °F / -0.3 °C; rank 41/50Incomplete: 0/31 days
February 1930Incomplete: 27/28 daysIncomplete: 0/28 days
March 1930Incomplete: 29/31 daysIncomplete: 0/31 days
April 1930Incomplete: 27/30 days44.0 °F / 6.7 °C; rank 9/16
May 1930Incomplete: 29/31 days55.6 °F / 13.1 °C; rank 10/15
June 1930Incomplete: 28/30 days67.8 °F / 19.9 °C; rank 16/16
July 1930Incomplete: 14/31 days69.2 °F / 20.7 °C; rank 10/16
August 1930Incomplete: 8/31 days67.1 °F / 19.5 °C; rank 5/17
September 1930Incomplete: 25/30 daysIncomplete: 29/30 days
October 1930Incomplete: 29/31 days49.6 °F / 9.8 °C; rank 3/15
November 1930Incomplete: 29/30 days40.8 °F / 4.9 °C; rank 6/14
December 1930Incomplete: 27/31 days31.0 °F / -0.6 °C; rank 7/13
January 1931Incomplete: 25/31 daysIncomplete: 30/31 days
February 1931Incomplete: 0/28 daysIncomplete: 27/28 days
March 1931Incomplete: 26/31 days36.4 °F / 2.4 °C; rank 11/16
April 1931Incomplete: 28/30 days45.9 °F / 7.7 °C; rank 12/16
May 1931Incomplete: 24/31 days54.8 °F / 12.7 °C; rank 7/15
June 1931Incomplete: 27/30 days63.4 °F / 17.4 °C; rank 9/16
July 193168.5 °F / 20.3 °C; rank 17/5169.2 °F / 20.7 °C; rank 11/16
August 193168.1 °F / 20.0 °C; rank 28/4968.3 °F / 20.2 °C; rank 12/17
September 1931Incomplete: 28/30 days63.4 °F / 17.5 °C; rank 14/15
October 1931Incomplete: 29/31 days53.8 °F / 12.1 °C; rank 14/15
November 193147.4 °F / 8.5 °C; rank 46/47Incomplete: 29/30 days
December 1931Incomplete: 27/31 days33.7 °F / 0.9 °C; rank 12/13

The station catalogue gives reference coordinates, but the historical instrument exposures have not been verified. With no exact painted viewpoint, no distance to Lawrence’s easel is claimed. Neither file covers a 1991–2020 reference. Some precipitation zeros are marked missing presumed zero; no rainfall total, rainless-day count or wetness rank is published. The linked JSON retains the daily values and flags.

Step 4 · Return to the water

Reflected light is still a question for looking

The pale strokes on the harbour water can invite a reading of brightness. A monthly average of high and low temperatures cannot test that light. It cannot measure cloud cover, wind, tide or the reflections at a particular moment, and it cannot establish that the painting records a single observed session.

For discussion: which parts of the date and place come from the museum, which details are visible in the picture, and which questions would need a dated sketch, letter or account of its making? No object-linked weather witness has been established. RISD’s archive guide identifies Lawrence papers, but those manuscripts have not been inspected. The weather record gives context around an approximate date; the painted season and Lawrence’s possible changes remain unknown.

Sources

Every source on this page

Weather values are decoded from NOAA files checked against sha256 fingerprints. Receipts distinguish downloads, text extractions, a manually transcribed catalogue card and supplied correspondence. Short quotations are checked against the cached texts. The private card and email links point to the holder’s collection gateway, not public copies of those sources. Fingerprints preserve the evidence used; they do not independently validate its historical interpretation.

  1. NOAA GHCN-Daily, Rockport 1 ESE, USC00196977U.S. government public data · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 eecaa3b659df34efae620194d0aae7180bad01e9025c3c87e8e83d7e912f2772Daily TMAX, TMIN and PRCP; source flags retained.
  2. NOAA GHCN-Daily, East Gloucester, USC00192150U.S. government public data · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 d3c7ca8f256584fc03b5f16b7a81694952adf9f2b5bcbe4e54e84218b65c945bSeparate nearby record, beginning in 1930; never fills Rockport gaps.
  3. NOAA GHCN-Daily station catalogueU.S. government public data · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 428eabc955883187935bce283766d5646e3ed7484b92eb0803874c0e8dd9b342Catalogue coordinates, not verified historical instrument locations.
  4. NOAA GHCN-Daily element inventoryU.S. government public data · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 c33ec006c4f35d0371e6f9ccfe3f656ae9de0b6f0f122794da07df7c971c48b5Nominal coverage is not a completeness claim.
  5. NOAA GHCN-Daily format, version 3.35U.S. government public data · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 0e4e6f0e6947cf1add884c328a01760f31c56ef5fb86b85ed57dd5dc4c4aeaa6Temperature units and measurement, quality and source flags.
  6. RISD Nature Lab, Edna Lawrence’s 117th BirthdayCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 1f56a9bad8f75c32ebcdbc094c263cf2d1ce401a95bfb27d059b5b265d68e292Text extracted from the downloaded HTML with Python HTMLParser; whitespace normalized. General biography, no dated Rockport visit.
  7. Rockport Art Association & Museum, Mission & HistoryCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 20ae7b36cfa1ad50a83c7589946a775e545dee139f121809b22ac2a9272cf2f0Text extracted from downloaded HTML. General summer-colony history, not Lawrence’s itinerary.
  8. RISD Fleet Library, Nature and Sustainability Resources: Nature LabCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 757473821e6c77fffd475d3ef864ef66296b152fd4be4ab6abd571c04e5acad9Downloaded HTML read directly; web-tool reopening returned 429. Finding aid only, journals not inspected.
  9. Huntsville Museum of Art, Rebels With a Cause checklist, item 31, PDF p. 11Copyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 1fa0dfc06ff1f768d23d37ea54ab8b6a832e8520b8061eab264e4794f6330010pdftotext -layout extraction from museum PDF. Item 31 is not an accession; this checklist gives no painting year.
  10. Natalie Mead, email to the author, 19 October 2026Copyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 809b898e38c9e8673a464966ada500daa6226a02806cc7e37e9060ae876c01f1Verbatim supplied correspondence excerpt; original mailbox not accessed. Link is the holder’s collection gateway, not a public copy of the email.
  11. Huntsville Museum of Art, catalogue card for Rockport HarborCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 e44b70940c58304ee54c45bcb0a18fa23583d4cbb1c41493df0bd4638d2c8c0dManual transcription checked against the supplied card. Card prints accession 2018,03, normalized to 2018.03. Link is the holder’s gateway, not a public copy of the card.
  12. Huntsville catalogue card, privately supplied research imageCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 84641080ee2e81f1dbaf134551c0a430e9b59a5fe46a7f9d09389ad6a51061d9Research-only catalogue thumbnail; no reproduction or derivative is published. Used for Nephos’s labelled visual reading.
  13. RISD Nature Lab, Edna Lawrence’s 117th BirthdayCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 c9387c74949d9feabd492e940ba0c38bd575fed5777db7f63a68cf9b8c9f0383Original download underlying the separately receipted text extraction. No artwork image is republished.
  14. Rockport Art Association & Museum, Mission & HistoryCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 5bc806cccb13c03c02b0711fb6c948612fad97dd01b54d4b3ac2fdc0cb3cba67Original download underlying the separately receipted text extraction. No artwork image is republished.
  15. RISD Fleet Library, Nature and Sustainability Resources: Nature LabCopyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 85ea1d6e8a41b65b77b4ac6ee58568877b95cc149ca9b6aa9abddafa48137a4cOriginal download underlying the separately receipted text extraction. No artwork image is republished.
  16. Huntsville Museum of Art, Rebels With a Cause checklist, item 31, PDF p. 11Copyright retained; factual attribution and short excerpts only; no artwork reproduction · retrieved 24 October 2026sha256 7b165664e020abd21dc601476cd68fbf271a07aa0169e98670bb5380fd2f78f8Original download underlying the separately receipted text extraction. No artwork image is republished.

The numbers on this page, as JSONThe method card, as JSON