Catalog entry

Ten Pound Island guards the entrance to Gloucester’s Inner Harbor and provides a crucial block to heavy seas running southerly down the Outer Harbor from the open ocean beyond. The rocky island and its welcoming lighthouse is seen, passed, and possibly blessed by every mariner entering the safety of Gloucester’s Inner Harbor after outrunning a storm at sea. Ten Pound Island is situated such that the Inner Harbor is protected from open water on all sides making it one of the safest harbors in all New England.

Legend has it that the island was named for the ten pound sum paid to the Indians for the island, and the smaller Five Pound Island deeper in the Inner Harbor was purchased for that lesser sum. None of it makes much financial sense when the entirety of Cape Ann was purchased for only seven pounds from the Indian Samuel English, grandson of Masshanomett the Sagamore of Agawam in 1700. From approximately 1640 on the island was used to hold rams, and anyone putting female sheep on the island was fined. Gloucester historian Joseph Garland has posited that the name actually came from the number of sheep pens it held, or pounds as they were called, and the smaller Five Pound Island was similarly named.

The island itself is only a few acres of rock and struggling vegetation but is central to the marine life of the harbor as it defines the eastern edge of the deep channel used to turn the corner and enter the Inner Harbor. The first lighthouse was lit there in 1821, and a house was built for the keeper adjacent to the lighthouse. 

In the summer of 1880 Winslow Homer boarded with the lighthouse keeper and painted some of his most masterful and evocative watercolor views of the busy harbor life swirling about the island at all times of day. Boys rowing dories, schooners tacking in and out in all weather, pleasure craft drifting in becalmed water, seen together they tell a Gloucester story of light, water and sail much as Lane’s work did only several decades earlier.

The Ten Pound Island light was built on a three-and-a-half acre island at the eastern end of Gloucester Harbor. Built as a conical stone tower, the original 20-foot-tall Ten Pound Island Light was first lit in October, 1821 after the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Town of Gloucester ceded 1.7 acres to the U.S. Government for the construction of an inner harbor lighthouse to help mariners navigate the harbor. Ten Pound Island light was a popular subject with artists, including Winslow Homer, who boarded with the lighthouse keeper at Ten Pound Island in the summer of 1880. It is frequently featured in Lane's paintings of Gloucester Harbor.

This information has been shared with the Lane project by Jeremy D'Entremont. More information can be found at his website, www.newenglandlighthouses.net or in The Lighthouse Handbook New England. This information has also been summarized from Paul St. Germain's book, Lighthouses and Lifesaving Stations on Cape Ann.

The Eastern Point Light is located in the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts on the east side of the entrance to Gloucester Harbor. In 1829, an unlit stone beacon was erected on Eastern Point to help mariners navigating Gloucester Harbor. Shortly thereafter, in 1832, a wrought-iron and copper lantern was added to the stone tower, and the first Eastern Point Light was born. During the 1840s, Gloucester became one of the most important fishing ports in America, and to cope with the increased fishing traffic, a new Eastern Point Light was built in 1848. The new 34 foot tower gained the nickname "The Ruby Light" due to its unique fixed red light. The Eastern Point Light was further improved upon in the following decades with the addition of a fourth-order Fresnel lens and fog bell.  

This information has been shared with the Lane project by Jeremy D'Entremont. More information can be found at his website, www.newenglandlighthouses.net or in The Lighthouse Handbook New England. This information has also been summarized from Paul St. Germain's book, Lighthouses and Lifesaving Stations on Cape Ann. 

Lane made several paintings for James Haughton from drawings. Between 1844 and 1865, Haughton and Mr. Sawyer ran a dry goods store in Winthrop Square, Boston, as Haughton, Sawyer & Co. They advertised themselves as being Army and Navy Outfitters, offering knapsacks, horse blankets, and uniforms, and as specialists in India Rubber Goods. The shop was totally destroyed in the Great Fire of 1872, along with several thousand dollars worth of art Mr. Sawyer had brought back from Italy.  Mr. Haughton was referred to by one historian (writing about Groton, Eliza Haughton’s home town) as “one of the most charming men I have ever met."

According to the inscription on Brace's Cove, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 147), Mrs. S. G. Rogers of Roxbury ordered a painting from "the entire sketch" by Lane. Brace's Rock, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 146) and Brace's Cove, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 147) were two halves of a single drawing, presumably separated by the time the inscription was written. Also according to that inscription, shortly before his death, Lane had prepared a canvas of 22 x 36 inches for the commission, but never completed the painting.

On another drawing Ten Pound Island in Gloucester Harbor, 1864 (inv. 104) was written: "And from this was taken one of the unfinished pictures for Mrs. S. G. Rogers of Roxbury standing in Lane's studio when he died," which suggests that Mrs. Rogers commissioned two paintings shortly before Lane's death.

An inscription on one of Lane's drawings of Ten Pound Island indicates that a painting was made after that drawing for the Reverend William Phillips Tilden. According to the inscription, Rev. Tilden was from Boston.