Articles

A small group of Cape Ann Museum patrons embarked on a “Lane in Maine” sailing trip aboard the 1930 Gloucester-built schooner the “American Eagle” between September 14-19, 2025. Eighteen guests began their trip with guided visits to the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, before then boarding the schooner for a multi-day exploration of many of the same harbors and islands that Fitz Henry Lane visited on successive visits during the late 1840s through mid-1850s.

Harbor Views: The Paintings of Fitz Henry Lane Walking Tour 

2025 dates include: August 9, August 30, September 26, October 24, November 7
Delve into the 19th century on this seasonal tour through the neighborhoods and waterfront areas in Gloucester, MA, that inspired the artwork of native son Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865).

Article about the Cape Ann Museum's Fitz Henry Lane collection by Margaretta M. Lovell in NorthShore Magazine, April 2025. "Gloucester’s Celebrated Artist Fitz H. Lane’s Ships, Boats, and Harborscapes at the Cape Ann Museum"

Sam Holdsworth (left) and John Wilmerding (right) standing with Georgia Barnhill (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts Emerita at the American Antiquarian Society) on October 27, 2017 at the Cape Ann Museum’s symposium hosted in conjunction with the exhibition “Drawn from Nature & On Stone: The Lithographs of Fitz Henry Lane.” Barnhill was the guest curator and John Wilmerding was the keynote speaker introduced by Sam Holdsworth. Watch a recording of the presentation here.

With great sadness, the Cape Ann Museum acknowledges the loss of two great scholars and friends of the Museum. Within May and June of 2024, Sam Holdsworth—Director of Fitz Henry Lane Online, CAM Board member, and painter—and John Wilmerding—renowned curator, professor, author and expert on Fitz Henry Lane—have passed away.

THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.
CAMTalks: Exhibition Series—Painting the Inhabited Landscape: Fitz H. Lane and the Global Reach of Antebellum America
with Dr. Margaretta Lovell, Jay D. McEvoy, Jr., Professor of American Art History at the University of California, Berkeley

Calling attention to unexplored dimensions of nineteenth-century painting, Painting the Inhabited Landscape is a major intervention in the scholarship on American art of the period and an enlightening examination of Fitz H. Lane’s work.

 
Mary Blood Mellen (1819-1886), Field Beach, Stage Fort Park, c. 1850s, Oil on canvas. Collection of the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA. Gift of Mrs. Preston Dise, 1964 [#1964].

Although often thought of in terms of her mentor, Fitz Henry Lane, Mary Blood Mellen (1819-1886) was a talented and accomplished artist in her own right who commands a place in the history of art on Cape Ann. To better understand Mellen and her artistic skills, the Cape Ann Museum is pleased to offer this special exhibition of her work, on view in the center of the Lane Gallery during Jan. 13, 2023 – April 2, 2023.

Unfurling Fitz Henry Lane from Cape Ann Museum on Vimeo.

Fitz Henry Lane’s paintings are transcendental works of light and air. But they are also treasured accounts of Gloucester’s fishing and trade industries. Erik Ronnberg is a master ship model maker, renowned maritime historian, and Maritime Curator at the Cape Ann Museum, which created the Fitz Henry Lane Catalogue Raisonné. Erik Ronnberg has been critical to expanding the Catalogue Raisonné into almost a three-dimensional experience of mid-19th century Gloucester.

Three Master in Rough Seas (Watercolor), c.1856 (inv. 795)

This work is a recent discovery as of 2022, a slightly smaller watercolor version of the dynamic small oil, Three Master in Rough Seas, 1856 (inv. 4), in the collection of the Cape Ann Museum. This painting was acquired at a recent auction in Belgium as an unknown work. Gallery labels on the back show that it was at some point sold through the Max Bine Gallery in Paris which was active from 1914–1930. Lane did very few watercolors; we have not seen him use the medium as preparatory works for oils where one would expect a looser technique as he worked out ideas. The brushwork here is very precise and he doesn’t use washes or scumbles as is typical in preparatory works. He appears to be copying his oil original as the composition and details precisely follow the oil painting.

Laid Down on Paper, Printmaking in America, 1800-1865 has been awarded the 2021 Ewell L. Newman Book Award by the American Historical Print Collectors Society. Published by the Cape Ann Museum in 2020, the book contains papers presented at a symposium organized in conjunction with the Museum’s 2017 exhibition, Drawn from Nature & On Stone: The Lithographs of Fitz Henry Lane. The Award is given annually and recognizes outstanding publications that enhance appreciation of American prints and printmakers.

Shooting Seabirds, c.1842 (inv. 789)

This exquisite early watercolor is one of only several we know by Lane. It is relatively small, 8 1/2 inches by 10 1/2 inches and is dated 1842. Lane was still working as a lithographer in Boston and is clearly employing those same techniques here with careful outline drawing and literal coloring. At first look it could be mistaken for a hand-colored lithograph. The work is signed on the front and is inscribed on the back, “John S. Chase Esq. Presented by Mr. Geo Parker, March 21, 1842.”

Drawn from Nature & on Stone: The Lithographs of Fitz Henry Lane

OCT. 7, 2017—MARCH 4, 2018 

 View of the Town of Gloucester, Mass., 1836 (inv. 351)
Drawn from Nature & on Stone will be the first ever comprehensive exhibition focusing on nineteenth-century American artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804–1865) as a printmaker. Georgia Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts Emeritus at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, is serving as guest curator, and worked closely with the Cape Ann Museum in organizing this special show. The exhibition, exhibition catalogue and related programming are being organized in connection with Fitz Henry Lane Online, a catalogue raisonné and resource tool created by the Cape Ann Museum.

A pair of Lane marine paintings with a fascinating provenance has surfaced through an old New England family with maritime ties to the brothers Robert B. and John M. Forbes. The paintings (Pilot Pendant: Approaching, n.d. (inv. 296) and Pilot Pendant: Departing, n.d. (inv. 297)) are clearly pendants, a pair intended to be displayed together. They are quite small, 17” by 14”, and were likely inset into wall paneling, perhaps on either side of a fireplace.

Fitz Henry Lane Online Announcement by Nancy E. Berry in NorthShore Magazine, May/June 2016. "The Cape Ann Museum moves 19th-century artist F.H. Lane online and into the 21st century." 

Phantom of Boston, c.1850s (inv. 574)

This remarkable Lane discovery has been a long time in the works.The painting was acquired by Gustav Klimann in the late 1950s from an antiques dealer in Essex, the town immediately west of Gloucester. Mr. Klimann, who died in the 1970s, was a well-known art conservator and restorer in Boston who did work for numerous collectors, galleries and museums in New England from the 1930s through the 1960s. From the first moment he saw the painting, Mr. Klimann thought it was a Lane. He had seen many Lanes, and may have restored some in the collection of his good friend Maxim Karolik, the pre-eminent collector of F.H. Lane and other nineteenth-century American artists. The Karolik collection had over a dozen Lanes and now forms the backbone of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston's American painting collection.

 
Ships in Fog, Gloucester, Massachusetts, c.1860 (inv. 293)

In 2015, the Princeton University Art Museum acquired this picture, one of Lane’s rare fog paintings. It had been in a private collection for many years and has rarely been exhibited, but is currently on display at the museum in Princeton, N.J.