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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. 146
Brace's Rock, Eastern Point
Brace's Rock
1863 Graphite on paper 1 sheet of paper 10 1/2 x 15 in. (26.7 x 38.1 cm) Inscribed lower center (in pencil): Brace's Rock, Eastern Point / F.H. Lane del. / Aug. 1863; Inscribed lower right (in pencil): Painting made from this part of the sketch for Mrs. H.E. Davidson / Mrs. G.P. Low / Mr. J. Whipple / James Houghton / James Mansfield; inscribed lower right (in pencil): FHL / JLS Jr / CS / HS
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Commentary
This and Brace's Cove, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 147) are two halves of the same drawing of Brace's Cove; this sheet is the right half of the drawing. Lane often used several sheets of paper in order to sketch and create a long, horizontal composition.
Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
original unretouched image
grayscale image
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): 5 [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.
Cape Ann Historical Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts, The Mysteries of Fitz Henry Lane, July 7–September 16, 2007., no. 48, ill., p. 101.
Traveled to: Spanierman Gallery, New York, N.Y., 4–1, 2007.
Traveled to: Spanierman Gallery, New York, N.Y., 4–1, 2007.
Published References
Paintings and Drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1974., fig. 80.
Wilmerding, John, ed. American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1980., fig. 114, p. 112, Brace's Rock.
Moses, Michael A. "Mary B. Mellen and Fitz Hugh Lane." Antiques Magazine Vol. CXL, No. 5 (November 1991)., p. 830. ⇒ includes 
text
text
Training the Eye and the Hand: Fitz Hugh Lane and 19th Century Drawing Books. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1993., p. 4, Brace's Rock, Eastern Point.
Kelly, Franklin. American Masters from Bingham to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Lund Humphries, 2004., fig. 3, p. 93, Brace's Rock.
American Masters from Bingham to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2004., fig. 4, p. 93.
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. 100, text, p. 88.
Wilmerding, John. "Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen." American Art Review 19, no. 4 (2007)., pp. 171, 176, Brace's Rock.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2007., no. 48, fig. 35, p. 101, text, p. 38. ⇒ includes text
text
The Braces Rock Series
The Brace’s Rock series of paintings is thought to comprise Lane’s last dated oils, painted in the fall and winter of 1863–64, not long before his death in August of 1865. Paintings of unusual peace and harmony, they present a fitting finale to Lane’s evolution as a painter. Each one is as much an ode to the bittersweet recollections of a late summer afternoon as it is a depiction of a familiar Gloucester landmark. Lane accomplished this without abandoning any of his fidelity to accurate depiction of place, season, and time of day.
Numerous writers have noted the symbolism of the decaying hull foundered on the rocks and the ebbing tide as markers of Lane's awareness of his own mortality. The paintings evoke an inescapable feeling of ennui in the preternatural calm of the sea, the limpid humidity of the still atmosphere, and the pink glow of the late afternoon sun off Brace's Rock. Knowing that these are Lane's last paintings, done in failing health in his studio throughout the course of his last winter, the viewer cannot escape the feeling that these paintings were a eulogy to his beloved Gloucester shoreline. Read on »