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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. 179
West Harbor and Entrance to Somes Sound
1852 Graphite on paper 10 3/8 x 16 in. (26.4 x 40.6 cm) Signed and dated: F. H. Lane del. Inscribed across top (in pencil): West Harbor + Entrance to Some's Sound Aug. 1852 / F.H. Lane / del.; Inscribed upper right: (in pencil): Sloop Superior / Pilot Getchell / Lane / Stevens / Tilden / Witherle / Adams / } cruisers; Inscribed lower right (in pencil): Mrs. Mackay
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Supplementary Images
Proposed viewpoint of Lane when creating the drawing. Viewpoint plottings by Erik Ronnberg using the... [more] 1875 U.S. Coast Survey chart of Mount Desert Island.
Photo: © Erik Ronnberg/U.S. Coast Survey
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
the Artist, Gloucester, Mass.
Joseph L. Stevens, Jr., Gloucester, Mass.
Samuel H. Mansfield, Gloucester, Mass.
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass., 1927
Marks & Labels
Marks: Inscribed (in red ink): 12 [numbering system used by curator A. M. Brooks upon Samuel H. Mansfield's donation of the drawings to the Cape Ann Museum]
Exhibition History
No known exhibitions.Published References
Paintings and Drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1974., fig. 113.
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. 49, p.56. ⇒ includes 
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Commentary
In 1852 Joseph Stevens Jr. and Lane set out on a multi-day excursion on board sloop "Superior" from Castine. This trip was documented by fellow passenger, William Witherle, in his diary (below).
This drawing, made on the south-east shore of South West Harbor, has a similar angle of view to that of Southwest Harbor, Mount Desert, 1852 (inv. 184), but slight changes in the viewing direction, and a viewing point south of “Superior’s” anchorage, were enough to bring Greening’s Island into the right margin. Clarke’s Point is diminished in its prominence with Beech, Robinson’s and Flying Mountains rising behind it, while Brown’s Mountain looms over Greening’s Island. No painting derived from this sketch has been found to date.
This drawing and Southwest Harbor, Mount Desert, 1852 (inv. 184) were made on Saturday, August 21, the last day of Lane’s 1852 cruise through Penobscot Bay to Mount Desert Island. From this voyage, only six of his sketches are known to have survived. It is thanks to Joseph Stevens’ annotations and dating of these drawings, paired with William Witherle’s account of the cruise, that the sailing route could be traced and linked to the surviving drawings. Lacking accounts for other cruises that are comparable to this one, it will be more difficult, if not impossible, to re-trace those voyages so accurately.
—Erik Ronnberg