loading 
Fitz Henry Lane
HISTORICAL ARCHIVE • CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ • EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE
An online project under the direction of the CAPE ANN MUSEUM
An online project under the direction of the CAPE ANN MUSEUM
Catalog entry
|
inv. 106
Stage Rocks and Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor
1857 Graphite on paper (2 sheets) 10 1/2 x 32 1/4 in. (26.7 x 81.9 cm) Inscribed lower right (in pencil): Stage Rocks and Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor sketched from a lumber loader vessel by F.H. Lane for a painting ordered by John J. Piper. Another picture afterward painted from the same for Capt. Frank Dale and wife.
|
Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
Proposed viewpoint of Lane when creating the lithograph. Viewpoint plottings by Erik Ronnberg using ... [more]U.S. Coast Survey sketch chart of Gloucester Harbor 1855.
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
the Artist, Gloucester, Mass.
Joseph L. Stevens, Jr., Gloucester, Mass.
Samuel H. Mansfield, Gloucester, Mass.
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass., 1927
Marks & Labels
Marks: Inscribed upper left (in red ink): 60 [numbering system used by curator A. M. Brooks upon Samuel H. Mansfield's donation of the drawings to the Cape Ann Museum]
Exhibition History
No known exhibitions.Published References
Paintings and Drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1974., fig. 17.
Commentary
This drawing shows Gloucester's Western sSore from the Outer Harbor. Lane has included the prominent house Steepbank as well as the flagpole that had been erected above Fresh Water Cove, the entrance of which is visible on the left. Stage Rocks, Stage Head, and Half Moon Beach were well-known landmarks in Gloucester, and the field above the beach (Fisherman's Field) was the site of the first settlement in Gloucester in the seventeenth century.
Lane's own writing on his pictures is virtually nonexistent, but in the Cape Ann Museum Library & Archive is a fragment of a letter describing his sketch of this scene. He wrote: "I yesterday made a sketch of Stage Fort and the surrounding scenery, from the water. Piper has given me an order for a picture from this point of view, to be treated as a sunset. I shall try to make something out of it, but it will require some management, as there is no foreground but water and vessels."