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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. 127
Town Parish
1863 Graphite on paper 10 1/2 x 16 in. (26.7 x 40.6 cm) Inscribed across bottom (in pencil): Town Parish F.H.Lane del. Painting made from this sketch for the Misses Babson
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Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
Map showing Lane's viewpoint
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): 57 [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. 46.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 2005. Reprint of Fitz Hugh Lane, by John Wilmerding. New York: Praeger, 1971. Includes new information regarding the artist's name., ill. 96.
Commentary
Family history and the inscriptions on Lane's drawings View in Town Parish, 1863 (inv. 126) and View Across the Marsh and Mill Pond in Town Parish, 1863 (inv. 119) indicate that he was asked to make three paintings for the Misses Babson before their departure for California. Two paintings, Babson and Ellery Houses, Gloucester, 1863 (inv. 10) and The Babson Meadows at Riverdale, 1863 (inv. 11), exist; the third was destroyed. This is believed to be the drawing for the third—another view of Riverdale, the Town Parish, and the Babson House.
The composition shows an inlet, the houses on the hill above the inlet, hay sheaves, and the remains of a gundalow. The Babson and Ellery houses are to the right, next to the Town Parish meeting house, which was destroyed in 1840. In the distance is the Riverdale Methodist Church, which was built in 1828. The drawing is assumed to have been made in the early 1860s in preparation for the paintings. However, based on the timeline of these buildings, and the fact that the trees are not grown up around the houses, it appears that the drawing shows the area as it would have appeared between 1828 and 1840. This is consistent with a newspaper article from the Cape Ann Advertiser that describes a painting of the area showing "a scene at Town Parish, showing the old meeting house on the Green, with its tall spire, as it appeared in days agone."