Catalog entry

Commentary

This painting of the sun breaking through a foggy morning on a quiet shore closely relates to Sunrise Through Mist of 1852 (below). The composition is nearly identical: the cluster of larger vessels with drying sails hanging just off the shore, a small sloop drifting alongside the shore rocks, the illuminated foreground rock leading to the arc of the beach where the man in the ubiquitious red shirt loads fish, probably cod or haddock, from his dory into the waiting ballast cart. Another man sits on an overturned barrel beside beautifully painted examples of a yawl boat and dory pulled up on the beach.

The position of the sun and the vaporous light filtering through the low lying mist is also almost identical to Sunrise Through Mist. However, here the tonality is more to the yellow and blue as opposed to the red and pink. Note the swirls of blue-gray fog partially enveloping the vessels and hanging off the hills of the headland.

The location is undetermined, certainly not off Norman's Woe reef, which juts off the rockbound western shore of Gloucester Harbor. It could be a pastiche of a few scenes—the headland is reminiscent of Stage Rocks in Gloucester Harbor.  If set in Gloucester, this could be a somewhat imaginary re-creation of Field Beach, which has a similar relationship to Gloucester Harbor and was a common landing place for small boats, though rarely in waters this calm. There was considerable inshore small-boat fishing going on around Gloucester Harbor, and the wagon—known as a ballast cart for the rocks it hauled to fill the holds of empty vessels—is of a design common to Cape Ann and seen in many other Lane paintings.

The relationship in style, subject and composition to the three other paintings seen below (Inv # 98, 81, 56), all painted in 1852, is fascinating and points toward a common European influence of romanticized shoreside scenes in light-filled calms that have been repeated in various forms since the 1600's. It is still unknown what, if any, specific influence Lane may have encountered to bring on this series-like group of works in 1852.     

For a long time Near Reef of Norman's Woe was believed to have been painted by an artist from the Scandinavian school and has only recently been convincingly attributed to Lane.

– Sam Holdsworth