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Catalog entry

inv. 119
View Across the Marsh and Mill Pond in Town Parish
1863
Graphite on paper (2 sheets)
10 x 26 in. (25.4 x 66 cm)
Inscribed lower center (in pencil): View across the marsh and mill pond in Town Parish / F.H. Lane del. / Painting made from this sketch for the Misses Babson. Maria Babson and Mrs. William Friend (Emma Babson)
Inscribed verso (in pencil): S.H.M. [Samuel H. Mansfield]
On view at the Cape Ann Museum

Commentary

This beautifully detailed drawing is the sketch for The Babson Meadows at Riverdale, 1863 (inv. 11), a painting that the inscription on this drawing indicates was made for the two Babson sisters. The pencil grid indicates the way in which Lane used the drawing to transfer the composition to canvas. 

The viewpoint is from the yellow Babson house looking across the marsh and the mill pond of Riverdale Mills towards the ancestral Babson house. Pole's Hill can be seen clearly on the left, and the Riverdale Methodist Church and Riggs School in the background.

In the drawing Lane does not include the hay wagon or female figure on the road that appear in the painting.

Related Work in the Catalog

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 upper left (in red ink): 86 [numbering system used by curator A. M. Brooks upon Samuel H. Mansfield's donation of the drawings to the Cape Ann Museum]

Exhibition History

National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875, February 10–June 15, 1980.

Published References

Paintings and Drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1974., fig. 36.
Moses, Michael A. "Mary B. Mellen and Fitz Hugh Lane." Antiques Magazine Vol. CXL, No. 5 (November 1991)., p. 830. ⇒ includes text
Citation: "View Across the Marsh and Mill Pond in Town Parish, 1863 (inv. 119)." Fitz Henry Lane Online. Cape Ann Museum. http://fitzhenrylaneonline.org/catalog/entry.php?id=119 (accessed April 25, 2024).
Record last updated December 28, 2015. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
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