If the little red fish shack perched on Rockport’s Bradley Wharf looks familiar, that’s because you’ve probably seen it in a painting somewhere. The picturesque shack was a favorite subject for the artists who came to Cape Ann every summer in the 1920s and ’30s to paint the buildings and denizens of the harbor.

One day after a student brought in yet another treatment of the building, Paris-trained illustrator and art teacher Lester Hornby is said to have shouted, “What, Motif Number One, again?” The name stuck, and to this day, “Motif No. 1” is known as one of the most frequently painted buildings in the world, turning up in paintings from South America to the Czech Republic.

Rockport’s “dirty little secret,” however, is that the original building actually collapsed and washed out to sea during the swells of the great Blizzard of ’78. Within a year, the town fathers had built and painted an exact replica to replace it. Perhaps it should be called “Motif No. 2”?