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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. 238
The "Golden State" Entering New York Harbor
The "Golden State" Entering the Harbor of New York
1854 Oil on canvas 26 x 48 in. (66 x 121.9 cm) Inscribed and dated verso (prior to relining): Painted by Fitz Henry Lane. / Gloucester. / Mass. / A.D. 1854
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Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
Private collection, Chevy Chase, Md.
Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1974
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1974
Exhibition History
John Wilmerding, William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1805, July 12–September 15, 1974., no. 30, ill. in color, The "Golden State" Entering the Harbor of New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, The Heritage of American Art, September 16–November 30, 1975., no. 33, ill., p. 86.
Traveled to: Dallas Museum, Dallas, Tex.; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colo.; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minn.
Traveled to: Dallas Museum, Dallas, Tex.; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colo.; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minn.
Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art, Kumamoto, Japan, Nature Rightly Observed, June 3–July 24, 1988.
Published References
Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1865. Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1974., no. 30, ill., The "Golden State" Entering the Harbor of New York.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Heritage of American Art: Paintings from the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: an Exhibition. American Federation of Arts, 1975. (exhibition catalogue).
Caldwell, John, and Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque. American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume I: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born by 1815. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994., ill., p. 495.
Dunlap, Sarah, and Stephanie Buck. "Fitz Who? The Artist Latterly Known as Fitz Hugh Lane." The Essex Genealogist 25, no. 1 (February 2005)., p. 14. ⇒ includes 
text
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Craig, James. Fitz H. Lane: An Artist's Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006., pl. 17, The "Golden State" Entering the Harbor of New York.
Commentary
This dramatic ship portrait of 1854 is one of only two known paintings that were signed using Lane’s full name. In this case, the signature is on the back: "Fitz Henry Lane, Gloucester, Mass. A.D. 1854." Interestingly, the only other signed painting is a portrait of another New York clipper ship, "Sweepstakes", 1853 (inv. 248), that was commissioned by the same owners, Chambers and Heiser of New York. Perhaps Lane was asserting his full name and residence on these two works to be sure that his relatively recent New York clientele would remember all his details.
The "Golden State" Entering New York Harbor is another relatively large painting for Lane (26 x 48 inches) and shows the strong influence of the English marine painter Robert Salmon. Salmon (1775–1845) lived and worked in Boston for many years and was the preeminent marine painter of his era. His studio was very near Lane’s lithography shop. Although, as is so often the case with Lane, we have no direct evidence of contact or a teacher-student relationship, Lane’s early works are so indebted to Salmon they have been confused with his in the past. In this case, the wind-whipped waves diagonally patterned across the canvas are very much like Salmon's style, as are the light-and-dark patterns of the clouds and a tumultuous harbor scene crowded with vessels.
The clipper ship "Golden State" was built in New York in 1852 and, as its name suggests, plied the seas around Cape Horn to California when overland travel across the North American continent was still unreliable. The clippers were the fastest ships of their time and could make the voyage to San Francisco in around one hundred days. They were not fully replaced by steamships until the 1860s.
The skyline of New York, as seen from New Jersey, is delineated in the background of this painting. A white steamship is seen just emerging in front of the clipper's bow, and both foreground and background are full of a wide variety of vessels, large and small. New York, then as now, was a vibrant, crowded world port. One can imagine Lane’s depiction of its energy and diversity of commerce an important selling point to an owner of a New York-based ship.
The clipper ship "Golden State" was built by Jacob Westervelt at New York in 1853 for Chambers and Heiser, NY, and sold to A.A. Low and Brother in 1855. She was wrecked at Cape Elizabeth, Maine, in 1886.
– Sam Holdsworth