loading 
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
|
inv. 61
View of Indian Bar Cove, Brooksville, Maine
1850 Oil on canvas 11 1/2 x 18 1/4 in. (29.2 x 46.4 cm) Signed and dated lower right: F.H. Lane / 1850
Inscribed verso: Painted by F.H. Lane / New Years present / to Doct. Saml. Morrill / from this daughter / Mrs. K.F. Williams / Jany. 1st, 1984. |
Related Work in the Catalog
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
Mrs. K.F. Williams, until 1854
Dr. Samuel Morrill, father of Mrs. K.F. Williams
Miss Dorothy Adlow, Boston
Mr. Nicolas Slonimsky, New York and Los Angeles, until 1969
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1969
Private collection, 1969
Godel & Company Fine Art, New York
Exhibition History
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, May 15–September 5, 1988., no. 47, ill. in color, p. 112.
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. New York: Praeger, 1971., no. 88, ill., p. 81.
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., no. 47, ill. in color, p. 112.
Moore, Thomas R. "'This Magic Moonshine': Fitz Hugh Lane and Nathaniel Hawthorne." American Art XII (Fall 1998). ⇒ includes 
text
text
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. 88, text, p. 81.
Commentary
This most sociable painting is a snapshot of the beginnings of a late afternoon picnic near Brooksville, Maine, that Lane likely participated in on one of his summer visits to the Stevens family, who lived in nearby Castine. The setting has been identified as lying between Indian Bar and Ram Cove, a popular picnic spot on the Bagaduce River, a tidal river that flows into the Penobscot Bay at Castine. The two boats are full of well-dressed couples out for a Sunday social on the shore, though they are probably too colorfully dressed to have just come from church. They are an anomalous sight in a Lane painting with their fine hats and bonnets enlivening the plain little sloops usually manned by working fishermen.
There is a fascinating companion to this painting, Fishing Party, 1850 (inv. 50), showing the identical setting with all sixteen of the same people several hours later. Now the full moon is high in the night sky and the picnickers are gathering around a fire on the shore, fishing from one of the boats and strolling on the moonlit beach. Both these paintings are unusual for Lane in that they are focused on people engaged in a communal social activity, a common subject of engravings and genre paintings of the period but not for Lane. One imagines that Lane participated in this idyllic event and had a wonderful time. He then did these two paintings as a remembrance, whether for himself, the Stevenses, or others at the picnic we don’t know. For a man whose work has a certain formal distance to it in its careful geometry and precise technique, these paintings provide a rare insight into a relaxed and sociable moment a world away from his norm.
– Sam Holdsworth