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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. 74
Dream Painting
1862 Oil on canvas 24 x 36 in. (61 x 91.4 cm) Signed and dated lower left: Fitz H. Lane 1862
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Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
This picture, the Property of John S. Webber Esq, Collector of the Port and District of Gloucester, ... [more]was (suggested) to the artist by a dream. Sometime last fall while asleep in bed, a richly furnished room was presented to my imagination. Upon the wall my attention was attracted to a picture which I have here endeavored to reproduce. The dream was very vivid and on awakening I retained it in memory for a long time. The effect was so beautiful in the dream that I determined to attempt its reproduction, and this picture is the result. The drawing is very correct, but the effect falls far short of what I saw, and it would be impossible to convey to canvas such gorgeous and brilliant colouring as was presented to me. This picture, however, will give to the beholder some faint idea of the ideal. /signed/ Fitz H. Lane.
Photo: © Terra Foundation for American Art
Tungsten light image of letter
Photo: © Terra Foundation for American Art
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
John Somes Webber, Gloucester, Mass.
Margaret Bowker, Brookline, Mass.
Duncan Wright, Portland, Maine and Waban, Mass., 1914
F.O. Bailey Company, Portland, Maine
Samuel Lowe, Jr., Newtonville, Mass., 1964
Sotheby Parke Bernet Galleries, New York
Lano Collection, Washington, D.C.
Daniel J. Terra Collection, Chicago, 1983
Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, Chicago, 1999
Exhibition History
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, Collection Cameo, September, 2000.
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, Studio Themes, January 13–March 4, 2001.
Musée d'Art Américain, Giverny, France, From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, March 30–June 16, 2002.
Published References
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane, 1804–1865: American Marine Painter. Salem, MA: The Essex Institute, 1964., no. 317, pp. 31–32.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane. New York: Praeger, 1971., ill. no. 86, ill. in b/w, p. 79.
Hemphill, Christopher. "Daniel Terra and His Collection." Town and Country (February 1984)., p. 196.
American Paintings, vol. 3. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1985., ill. in color, p. 29, text, p. 28.
Christie's, New York. (May 25, 1989, sale 6838)., lot 41, ill., p. 53, text, p. 52.
Moses, Michael A. "Mary B. Mellen and Fitz Hugh Lane." Antiques Magazine Vol. CXL, No. 5 (November 1991)., p. 833. ⇒ includes 
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Miller, David C. "The Iconology of Wrecked or Stranded Boats in Mid- to Late Nineteenth-Century American Culture." In American Iconology: New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993., ill. in b/w, fig. 9.7, text, p. 196.
Kennedy, Elizabeth. "The Terra Museum of American Art." American Art Review (December 2002)., text, pp. 131–32.
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. 86, text, pp. 79-80.
Craig, James. Fitz H. Lane: An Artist's Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006., text, p. 158.
H. Travers Newton, Jr. "Fitz Henry Lane's Series Paintings of 'Brace's Rock': Meaning and Technique." Terra Foundation for American Art. Unpublished report., Dream Painting. ⇒ includes text
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Nicholas Robbins. "Rock-Bound: Fitz Henry Lane in 1862." Art Journal (Oxford) Volume 44, no. 1 (2021)., fig. 14, p. 121. ⇒ includes text
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Commentary
In 1862, Lane moved out of his stone house on Duncan Point and stayed with his friends Dr. and Mrs. H. E. Davidson. During this visit, the idea for this painting came to him in a dream, as he recounted in a letter he wrote about its genesis. It is very unusual in Lane's oeuvre, and his only known painting of a purely imaginative subject. Lane writes: