Catalog entry

Commentary

This extraordinary painting is likely the last of Lane’s great Gloucester Inner Harbor series. He began these paintings when he returned to Gloucester after spending sixteen years in Boston as a lithographer. In this series he chronicles the changes to the harbor as Gloucester’s fleet and waterfront capacity greatly expanded after years of stasis. An era of prosperity was replacing decades of hardship and the people of Gloucester were torn between a nostalgia for the harbor that was and anticipation of a more prosperous future. In the earlier paintings of the series Lane chronicles ship building, wharves being extended into deeper water, the development of Fort Point and a fascinating array of shoreside activities.

The group of paintings depicting the harbor include The Fort and Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1847 (inv. 271), Gloucester Harbor, 1847 (inv. 23), The Fort and Ten Pound Island, Gloucester (Harbor Scene), 1848 (inv. 58), View of Gloucester Harbor, 1848 (inv. 97), The Fort and Ten Pound Island, Gloucester (Harbor Scene), 1848 (inv. 58), and The Old Fort and Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, 1850s (inv. 30).

If this is the last painting in the series, Lane is summing it up in a dramatic fashion by including every vessel and activity possible in the tight confines of Harbor Cove. It is a tour de force of composition and the painting of ships as if Lane wanted to show off all his skills in one work. He has crammed more boats at more angles—aground, afloat; sails up, down and drying—than the harbor can possibly hold. To top it off he has draped a gill net over the masts of the double-ended New England boat on the beach, a very subtle and difficult piece of painting. The sun is about to set on a hazy afternoon and Lane has used a whitish series of highlights moving laterally across the painting to punctuate and lead the eye through the dizzying level of detail.

Continue reading below where Erik Ronnberg has labeled and described all the components of the painting in detail.

– Sam Holdsworth

 

A Visual Guide to the Painting

While this scene is a part of Gloucester’s Inner Harbor, the part in the foreground (enclosed by Duncan’s Point at left and Fort Point at right) was called Harbor Cove. It was Gloucester's principal receiving area and landing from the early-eighteenth to the late-nineteenth century. It provided the deepest water at wharfside in the Inner Harbor, yet was still too shallow for larger vessels to enter except at high tide. Vessels larger than small schooners were firmly aground at low tide, as this depiction reveals. The new wharf of George H. Rogers, built out from Fort Point, was intended to berth larger vessels in adequately deep water, but as this image shows, grounding at low tide remained a problem.

The harbor layout in Lane’s painting follows View in Gloucester Harbor, 1850s (inv. 143) with great accuracy. As was Lane’s practice, his drawing omits most of the vessels which appear in the painting, leaving only two that were probably included to help him gauge the dimensions of vessels in proximity to them. Perspective lines in the middle sheet of the drawing are located where he placed groups of vessels at various distances, using the lines to gauge relative dimensions. 

Foreground, the intertidal zone at the head of Duncan’s Point, looking south-southwest:

1. A stone anchor, or killick, was a commonly used substitute for an iron anchor to anchor and secure fish traps, shellfish cars, and other inshore fishing gear. It was made from a long, flat beach stone, which was fitted to a forked tree branch, which in turn was fitted to a wooden “fluke” and secured with wedges. The depicted killick is connected with rope to:

2. A lobster car—a floating holding tank for live lobsters and other shellfish. Made of wood, its side and bottom planks were sometimes spaced apart half an inch or so, for circulation of water to keep the critters alive. This example is instead bored with numerous holes for the same purpose. A new lobster car was ballasted with rocks so only its top was visible. As the wood absorbed water, the rocks were removed so the top remained visible and accessible.

3. A yawl boat, possibly from the packet schooner (#9), offers a good view of its inboard arrangement. Note the arrangement of thwarts (seats) in the stern for passengers, an arrangement common to the yawl boats of fishing and merchant vessels. Not used like dories for fishing, they served as lifeboats and for errands in port.

4. A collection of fishing gear, probably off-loaded from the adjacent New England boat (No. 6), includes: a rope coil, probably warp for the nearby anchor; an open keg, possibly once used for a marker buoy for a gill net; a wood anchor stock resting against the rock and two hand-lines on large wooden winders next to it; and a large keg.

5. Walking from the New England boat is one of her crew with a gill net over his shoulder. See Inv. 198 for what is the likely preliminary sketch for this detail.

6. The aforementioned New England boat is of the double-ended type, about twenty-five feet long, and of lapstrake construction. A torn gill net (#6A) is hanging from her masts to dry before being brought ashore for repairs and stowage. The hull is propped upright with planks, suggesting that her owner plans to clean the bottom and give the hull a coat of pine tar, with a heavy coat of pitch below the waterline.

7. Another of the New England boat’s crew is dressing large cod for sale as fresh fish—a welcome (and better-paying) alternative to the usual split, salted, and dried cod.

Vessel types afloat (or aground in some cases), from left to right:

8. Outside Harbor Cove, in The Stream, four fishing schooners are getting under way to the fishing grounds. All carry (or very soon will carry) their yawl boats on stern davits, indicating that they are in the hand-line fishery and most likely bound for Georges Bank.

9. Two hand-line schooners are alongside a larger topsail schooner whose fancy stern with arch and gallery lights (windows) indicate that she is in the packet trade. There might be small transactions with the two schooners for food items, tobacco, etc. on account with the store to whom the goods were shipped, which the packet’s skipper will pass on to the storekeeper.

10. Beyond the three schooners is a large square-rigged merchant vessel—either a brig or a bark—which has probably (and symbolically) returned from a trading voyage to Paramaribo, capital of Surinam, and principal port of call in Gloucester’s foreign trade. If owned by George H. Rogers, she will likely tie up at his new wharf (#16) at Fort Point.

11. In the distance are two schooners and a hermaphrodite brig, the last mentioned being outward bound.

12.The square-stern New England boat in this painting also appears in Lane’s drawing in exactly the same place and angle of view. No connection by ownership has been made to Lane or his friends. It is possible that he drew it to establish a dimensional reference for vessels added nearby in the painting.

13. A lumber schooner lies aground—testimony to the shallowness of Harbor Cove at low tide. The topsail schooner at John W. Lowe’s wharf (#18) is almost completely out of the water.

14. Another grounded lumber schooner—this time with a fore topsail rig. Lane’s detailing of the stacked lumber is no less meticulous than the care taken by the crew to secure the deck load neatly and securely.

Background: The Outer Harbor and Fort Point:

Lane’s efforts to depict a busy Inner Harbor resulted in almost completely hiding his drawing’s meticulous detailing of Ten Pound Island and Gloucester’s western shore at the mouth of the Outer Harbor.

15. The lighthouse and lightkeeper’s dwelling on Ten Pound Island.

16. George H. Rogers’s new wharf was near completion at the time Lane made his drawing. Once its stone bulkhead pier was finished, a timber wharf on spiles (wood pilings) was built out into deeper water—not deep enough to prevent the sloop obscured by a drying gillnet (#6A) from grounding out and heeling.

17. Ignatius Webber’s windmill, then long out of use, was acquired by Rogers and moved to his new wharf. The windmill’s former site was then becoming part of the grounds for the new Pavilion Hotel (See Gloucester Harbor, 1852 (inv. 38)). No records have thus far described its new use and contents.

18. John W. Lowe’s wharf and buildings, still standing in this painting, were destroyed by fire in 1877.

– Erik Ronnberg

Viewpoint map showing Lane's location when making this painting. 

 

Related Work in the Catalog

Supplementary Images