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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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Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
Photo: Sotheby's
Viewpoint chart showing Lane's location when making the image
Viewpoint chart showing Lane's location when making the image (detail)
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
The Artist, Gloucester, Massachusetts
Edward D. Peters, Boston, Massachusetts
Erving and Joyce Wolf Collection
Sotheby's, New York, April 14, 2023
Private collection
Exhibition History
DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, Fitz Hugh Lane: The First Major Exhibition, March 20–April 17, 1966., no. 24.
Traveled to: Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine, 30–6, 1966.
Traveled to: Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine, 30–6, 1966.
John Wilmerding, William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1805, July 12–September 15, 1974., no. 20, Bar Island and Mount Desert Mountains from the Bay in front of Some's Settlement.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, May 15–September 5, 1988., no. 50, ill. in color, 109, Bar Island and Mt. Desert Mountains from Somes Settlement.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Published References
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane: The First Major Exhibition. Lincoln, MA: De Cordova Museum; in association with Colby College Art Museum, 1966., no. 24, ill., Somes Harbor. ⇒ includes 
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Wilmerding, John. "Fitz Hugh Lane's Paintings Down East." Down East (April 1966)., ill., p. 22, Somes Harbor. ⇒ includes text
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Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1865. Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1974., no. 20, Bar Island and Mount Desert Mountains.
A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760–1910. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1983., no. 33, ill. in color pp.82-83, Somes Harbor.
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., p.109, cat. 50 and p.139 fig. 13, Bar Island and Mt. Desert Mountains from Somes Settlement.
Training the Eye and the Hand: Fitz Hugh Lane and 19th Century Drawing Books. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1993., p. 21, Bar Island and Mt. Desert Mountains from Somes Settlement.
Wilmerding, John. "Fitz Hugh Lane." The Artist's Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 45–67., fig. 44, p. 51, Bar Island and Mount Desert Mountains from the Bay in front of Some's Settlement. ⇒ includes text
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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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Moore, Thomas R. "'This Magic Moonshine': Fitz Hugh Lane and Nathaniel Hawthorne." American Art XII (Fall 1998). ⇒ includes text
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Kelly, Franklin. American Masters from Bingham to Eakins: The John Wilmerding Collection. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Lund Humphries, 2004., p. 118.
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. 39, text, pp. 53-54, Bar Island and Mount Desert Mountains from the Bay in front of Some's Settlement.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2007., fig. 18 (in reverse), p. 31, Bar Island and Mount Desert Mountains from the Bay in front of Some's Settlement. ⇒ includes text
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Commentary
This painting was made from a drawing View of Bar Island and Mount Desert Mountains, from the Bay in Front of Somes Settlement, 1850 (inv. 177) from Lane’s first summer cruise in Penobscot Bay, in the company of Joseph Stevens and friends in the “General Gates”, a New England boat of the Casco Bay variety. It was near the end of that cruise that the party explored Somes Sound, leaving Lane captivated by Mount Desert Island and its geographic diversity.
Somes Settlement (later Somesville) was a village at the head of Somes Sound, having a small harbor with a narrow entrance marked by Bar Island. Lane’s party camped on the island, later putting him ashore at the settlement to explore and make drawings, including the one for this painting.
This must have been one of Lane's earliest Maine paintings. The composition with dark foreground beach and beached vessels leads the eye out into the placid waters of the sound and up to the magnificent peaks of Mount Desert Island. Both the composition and detailed narrative of the everyday doings in the shallow cove are reminiscent of Lane's great Gloucester Inner Harbor series of 1848-1852. Here there is much less going on and Lane, while still faithful to his narrative instincts, is now more engaged in depicting the high blue sky, the towering hills and the soft midsummer light infusing the scene. It wasn't long before Lane's Maine paintings were far less narrative and fully gave themselves over to spectacular light effects of the Maine summer atmosphere.
The painting follows the drawing closely, including the “General Gates” anchored off Bar Island with the party’s tent set up on the shore nearby. To the left of the island, in the distance, is a topsail schooner derived from a similar schooner in the drawing. There can be little doubt that these vessels were in the drawing to convey a sense of distance and serve the same purpose in the painting.
The vessels depicted in the foreground are typical schooner types then found along the Maine Coast. At left, a pinky drying sail could still be commonly seen fishing offshore. The topsail schooner at left center is a coastal packet used to carry small-quantity and high-value goods, as well as passengers, to and from smaller ports not visited by steamers. Grounded at right is a coasting schooner used for bulk cargos – lumber, hay, lime, and farm produce among the more common examples. The yawl boat approaching the shore may belong to this schooner; the larger, more elaborate example aground most likely belongs to the packet schooner.
–Erik Ronnberg, Sam Holdsworth