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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
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inv. 107
Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor
1857 Graphite on paper folded sheet 9 x 28 in. (22.9 x 71.1 cm) Inscribed lower center (in pencil): Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor F.H. Lane del. Picture painted from this sketch for Mrs. William F. Davis. Perhaps from this sketch Lane made his painting to represent the "Landing at Cape Anne [sic]."
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Verso
Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
Infrared detail
Photo: Marcia Steele
© Cape Ann Museum
© Cape Ann Museum
Photo: Boston Imaging Digital Solutions
© Cape Ann Museum
© Cape Ann Museum
Proposed viewpoint of Lane when creating the drawing. Viewpoint plottings by Erik Ronnberg using U.S... [more]. 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): 85 [numbering system used by curator A. M. Brooks upon Samuel H. Mansfield's donation of the drawings to the Cape Ann Museum]
Exhibition History
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875, February 10–June 15, 1980.
Published References
Paintings and Drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1974., fig. 18.
Wilmerding, John, ed. American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1980., fig. 271, p. 240.
Newton, Travers, and Marcia Steele. "The Series Paintings of Fitz Henry Lane: From Field Sketch to Studio Painting." In Emil Bosshard, Paintings Conservator (1945–2006): Essays by Friends and Colleagues, edited by Maria de Peverelli, Mario Grassi, and Hans-Christoph von Imhoff. Florence: Centro Di, 2009, pp. 194–215., p. 209. ⇒ includes 
text
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H. Travers Newton, Jr. "Fitz Henry Lane's Series Paintings of 'Brace's Rock': Meaning and Technique." Terra Foundation for American Art. Unpublished report., Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor. ⇒ includes text
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Commentary
This very detailed drawing is similar to the painting made after it, Stage Rocks and the Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor, 1857 (inv. 8), without one of the lumber vessels in the foreground. In the drawing, Lane has only sketched in a hull with two masts. Interestingly, the flagpole that flew above Freshwater Cove, and which appears to have been a local landmark, is included in this drawing, but not in the final painting.
Half Moon Beach, shown here adjacent to Fisherman's Field, was the site of the first settlement of Gloucester in 1623. According to the inscription on this drawing, there was a painting made after this to be a new frontispiece to a book called the Landing at Cape Ann. The painting has not been located, nor is there a version of this publication of this name that includes a frontispiece by Lane, so the project seems to have been aborted.