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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. 237
Stage Fort across Gloucester Harbor
Old Fort, foot of Commercial Street
1862 Oil on canvas 38 x 60 in. (96.5 x 152.4 cm) Signed and dated lower right: Fitz H. Lane / 1862
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Related Work in the Catalog
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
the Artist, Gloucester, Mass.
Sargent Family, Gloucester, Mass.
Sargent Murray Gilman Hough House, Gloucester, Mass., 1938
Vose Galleries, Boston, 1978
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1978
Exhibition History
DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, Fitz Hugh Lane: The First Major Exhibition, March 20–April 17, 1966., no. 52.
Traveled to: Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine, 30–6, 1966.
Traveled to: Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine, 30–6, 1966.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, May 15–September 5, 1988., no. 16, ill. in color, p. 38.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Published References
Babson, Susan. List of Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane of Gloucester. [city unknown]: [publisher unknown], 1938., p. 3, Old Fort, foot of Commercial Street.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane, 1804–1865: American Marine Painter. Salem, MA: The Essex Institute, 1964., no. 112, p. 63.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane: The First Major Exhibition. Lincoln, MA: De Cordova Museum; in association with Colby College Art Museum, 1966., no. 52. ⇒ includes 
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Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane. New York: Praeger, 1971., p. 181.
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., no. 16, ill. in color, p. 38.
Training the Eye and the Hand: Fitz Hugh Lane and 19th Century Drawing Books. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1993., fig. 17, pp. 20–22.
Caldwell, John, and Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque. American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume I: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born by 1815. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994., ill., p. 495.
Davis, Elliot Bostwick. "American Drawing Books and Their Impact on Fitz Hugh Lane." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 105, part 1 (1995)., p. 88. ⇒ includes text
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Craig, James. Fitz H. Lane: An Artist's Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006., pl. 24, p.136.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2007., fig. 34, p. 37. ⇒ 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., Stage Fort across Gloucester Harbor. ⇒ includes text
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Nicholas Robbins. "Rock-Bound: Fitz Henry Lane in 1862." Art Journal (Oxford) Volume 44, no. 1 (2021)., fig. 1, p. 108. ⇒ includes text
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Commentary
Bathed in the light of a summer’s late afternoon, this painting shows the overgrown Stage Fort, which was a relic of the seventeenth-century settlement of Gloucester. The dramatic evening light and still water make this a quiet picture, similar to some of Lane's other late works.
This southerly view looks out over Gloucester Harbor with Stage Rock, Tablet Rock, and Fishermen’s Field (now Stage Fort Park) in the right half. At far left in the distance lies Eastern Point and its light house.The foreground lies just west of the Cut where the Annisquam River joins the harbor. Afloat in the distance, a schooner and a full-rigged ship lie becalmed while a small schooner boat approaches the shore in the foreground. Further right in the cove, a cat-rigged yawl boat lies at anchor.
The tranquility and restful colors in this scene are reflective of Lane’s advancing age and his thoughts on the past. The beached and time-worn hull of a New England boat picks up on a vessel type he portrayed over a span of nearly two decades, with each succeeding painting showing the craft in a further stage of deterioration. The wreck depicted here will become the broken frames and bottom plank lying on the beach at Norman’s Woe Cove in another large painting completed the same year (Norman's Woe, Gloucester Harbor, 1862 (inv. 1)).
None of the vessels in the painting were depicted in the drawing (Gloucester Outer Harbor, from the Cut, 1850s (inv. 109) and Untitled (inv. 222) combined) and only parts of the latter’s foreground were changed by adding vegetation and driftwood to the painting. The rest of the image remains faithful to the drawing.
This is one of Lane’s largest paintings, the image being 1-1/2 times larger than the drawing. The drawing, Gloucester Outer Harbor, from the Cut, 1850s (inv. 109), for this picture indicates that a painting for Lane's friend Mrs. H. E. Davidson was made after the drawing. Whether this painting is the one referred to by the inscription on the drawing is unknown. Dr. H.E. Davidson was Lane's doctor, as well as a good friend, and the Davidsons owned several Lane pictures, including his unusual Dream Painting, 1862 (inv. 74).
Also unproven, but also very likely, is that this is the painting described in an article in the Cape Ann Advertiser from January 1862. Such an identification would support the idea that this is the Davidson picture.
– Melissa Geisler Trafton and Erik Ronnberg