Catalog entry

Brace’s Rock protrudes off the eastern shore of Eastern Point at the mouth of Brace’s Cove, a small and deceptively peaceful cove with a lovely crescent beach set in the otherwise rockbound coast of the eastern arm of Gloucester Harbor, about a mile north of the harbor entrance. Belying the serenity of Lane’s paintings, Brace’s Rock, the cove and the ledge forming its northern arm was one of the worst sailing hazards on the entire New England coast. This shore was the scene of countless shipwrecks and loss of life due to its appearance from the sea as a false entrance to Gloucester Harbor. Infamously known as False Point in the days of sail, lookouts on board ship peering through bad weather would see traces of Gloucester harbor and ships at anchor over the low lying land and Niles Pond that separate Brace's Cove from the harbor. They would guide the vessel around what they thought was the end of Eastern Point into the harbor. A reef of rocks jutting across the entrance to Brace Cove brought innumerable ships to grief in this manner. Nowhere on Cape Ann is the illusion of the wild ocean seemingly tamed by a sheltering bay more tragically real than Brace’s Cove seen on a still summer afternoon as Lane has painted it.

In Lane’s day Brace's Cove was still a wild and untouched area of Cape Ann, part of the privately owned Nile’s Farm, and was unvisited by tourists and unsuited for maritime interests. Lane did his drawings from the coast just north of the cove, not from the beach where most would assume he did the drawing. Brace's Rock looks identical from either vantage point.

Mrs. H. E. Davidson was a close friend of Lane's and the wife of his personal physician in Gloucester. Lane made several paintings from drawings for her, including the famous Dream Painting, 1862 (inv. 74).

Mrs. H. E. Davidson was Sarah M. (Bowker) Chamberlain (1827–80), and the wife of Dr. Herman E. Davidson (1815–90).  She was born as Sally Morse Bowker, daughter of James and Izanna Bowker in Hopkinton, MA, April 29, 1827. (1)  She married John Henry Chamberlain, merchant, in 1847 when she was twenty and he was thirty. (2)  He died the following year in the Fiji Islands.  She and Dr. Herman E. Davidson were married in Boston in 1859 by Mary Mellen’s brother-in-law and Gloucester’s Universalist minister, Rev. W. R. G. Mellen. Herman was forty-four and she was thirty-two. (3)

Mrs. Davidson joined her husband in his Gloucester home, the old Sanders house, now the Sawyer Free Library, and had two daughters, Alice Bowker Davidson, born in 1860 and Edith Bowker Davidson, born in 1862. The Davidsons were relatively wealthy, owning shares of gas, steamboat, and railroad companies, a horse, a chaise, a large house with barn, an acre of land, and two-to-three thousand dollars in "cash assets.”(4)

Fitz H. Lane gave Mrs. Davidson the sketch of his Dream Painting that he made during his sojourn at the Davidson’s after his altercation with his brother-in-law, and she and her husband were left equal portions of Lane’s five-hundred-dollar legacy in his will.  

Mrs. Davidson was ill for several years before her death, during which time she and her husband traveled in Europe and around America seeking a more congenial climate for her. She died of consumption in Washington, D.C. on May 16, 1880, and was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Gloucester, Massachusetts. (5)

– Stephanie Buck

(1) Massachusetts Vital Records, Births, Hopkinton. US Vital Records.org

(2) Massachusetts Vital Records, Marriages, Hopkinton, Vol. 31, 27.

(3) Massachusetts Vital Records, Marriages, Boston, Vol. 128, 77.

(4) Assessor’s Valuations, Harbor Parish East Ward, 1862-64. Gloucester Archives, CC223.

(5) Gloucester Deaths, Bk. 10, 80.

Lane made several paintings for James Haughton from drawings. Between 1844 and 1865, Haughton and Mr. Sawyer ran a dry goods store in Winthrop Square, Boston, as Haughton, Sawyer & Co. They advertised themselves as being Army and Navy Outfitters, offering knapsacks, horse blankets, and uniforms, and as specialists in India Rubber Goods. The shop was totally destroyed in the Great Fire of 1872, along with several thousand dollars worth of art Mr. Sawyer had brought back from Italy.  Mr. Haughton was referred to by one historian (writing about Groton, Eliza Haughton’s home town) as “one of the most charming men I have ever met."

Mary Letitia (Crymbah) Low (c.1823–89) was born in Ireland.  She married Capt. Gorham Parsons Low (1806–80) around 1845 (although no marriage record has been found) and had three sons, only one of which survived her. A notation on Brace's Rock, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 146) indicates that Lane made a painting of Brace's Cove for Mrs. Low.

Capt. Low was a mariner, master of trade ships travelling the world. He kept a journal of his voyages that was published in 1937 under the title Sea Made Men. (1) Over the years, he was a Gloucester selectman and assessor, and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was also President of the Gloucester and Boston Steamboat Company, Director and President of the Gloucester Marine Insurance Company, a Director of the Sawyer Free Library and Lyceum, Director and President of the Bank of Cape Ann (Cape Ann National Bank), and was on the Board of Trustees of the Cape Ann Savings Bank.

Mrs. Low, according to her obituary, “was a woman of culture and refinement, and very pleasing manners, and was held in universal esteem.” (2) This was certainly true of her husband, who in his will said: “It is my wish and desire that my beloved wife Mary L. Low shall have the entire control and absolute disposal of all the property of all kinds which I shall die possessed, … because I have full faith and perfect confidence [in] the kindness and love which for more than thirty years I have found uniformly to characterize all her intercourse with her family ….” (3)

Until her husband’s death, the Lows lived on the corner of Angle and Washington Streets, neighbors of Addison Gilbert, in a large and imposing house that has since been demolished. Afterwards Mary Low lived in the old Low Homestead at the Green, where she died at the age of sixty-six.

– Stephanie Buck

(1) Cape Ann Museum Journals: Reminiscences of the sea life of Gorham P. Low of Gloucester, Mass., 1872.

(2) Obituary, Cape Ann Advertiser, June 14, 1889.

(3) Massachusetts Probate Records, Low, A-Low, J, 1828-1991 # 45723.

James Mansfield owned a painting by Lane made from the drawing of Brace's Rock. He was a Gloucester resident, and was part of the fire company. He petitioned police for more town enforcement. (1)

(1) Sarah Dunlap and Stephanie Buck, Fitz Henry Lane: Family and Friends (Gloucester, MA: Church & Mason Publishing; in association with the Cape Ann Historical Museum, 2007), 9, 103.

According to the inscription on Brace's Cove, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 147), Mrs. S. G. Rogers of Roxbury ordered a painting from "the entire sketch" by Lane. Brace's Rock, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 146) and Brace's Cove, Eastern Point, 1863 (inv. 147) were two halves of a single drawing, presumably separated by the time the inscription was written. Also according to that inscription, shortly before his death, Lane had prepared a canvas of 22 x 36 inches for the commission, but never completed the painting.

On another drawing Ten Pound Island in Gloucester Harbor, 1864 (inv. 104) was written: "And from this was taken one of the unfinished pictures for Mrs. S. G. Rogers of Roxbury standing in Lane's studio when he died," which suggests that Mrs. Rogers commissioned two paintings shortly before Lane's death.

Caroline (Stevens) Foster Stevens (1826-1886) was the wife of Lane's good friend Joseph Stevens Jr. With her husband, she accompanied Lane on sketching expeditions around Gloucester. The back of Steam Bark at Sunset, 1855 (not published) indicates that it was a gift from Lane to Caroline Stevens in 1855. At his death, he left to her "the beautiful wreath of wax flowers (wrought by Mrs. Mary B. Mellen)."

The Gloucester family connections were many. Caroline and her husband were actually second cousins on the Stevens side. On the Foster side, Caroline's cousin, Julia Ann Foster, was married to Joseph Hooper, a friend of Joseph Stevens, Jr. and of Lane.

Caroline and Joseph had five children, one of whom died very young. Their daughter, Helen Stevens Babson, donated Dolliver's Neck and the Western Shore from Field Beach, 1857 (inv. 3) to the Cape Ann Museum.

Caroline and Joseph Stevens, Jr. are buried together in Oak Grove Cemetery in Gloucester; Lane is buried next to them.

Joseph Lowe Stevens, Jr. (1823–1908) was Lane's closest friend and traveling companion. He was also executor of Lane's estate, and a tireless promoter of Lane's work. He was a supporter of abolition and animal welfare, and an active member of the Gloucester Lyceum. It was the Stevens family who encouraged Lane to make a print of Castine and who published and promoted it there Castine, from Hospital Island, 1855 (inv. 448). Joseph first worked as a dry goods salesman and in later life “engaged in the wholesale dry-goods and woollen trade on Summer St. Boston, travelling daily to and fro” on the train. (1)

Joseph's father, Dr. Joseph Lowe Stevens, Sr., was born in Andover, Massachusetts, and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He married Dorothy Little of Castine, Maine, where the couple settled, and where Joseph Jr. was born in 1823. In the spring of 1840, at the age of seventeen, Joseph, Jr. left Maine and moved to Gloucester to work in his uncle’s Samuel Stevens' dry goods store and to live with his grandfather, Zachariah Stevens. Seven years later, Joseph, Jr. married his second cousin, Caroline Stevens Foster. The couple eventually had five children, one of whom died very young.

Like most of the educated population of the town, Joseph joined the Gloucester Lyceum shortly after arriving in town; the signature of John J. Piper appears next in the membership book; and the next after him was Fitz Henry Lane. (2) Joseph remained involved with the Gloucester Lyceum and Library for most of his life, acting as director for many years, and was the superintendent at the time it became incorporated as the Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library.

Joseph also helped his father work on a history of Castine, and he was sufficiently concerned about the welfare of animals to serve on the boards of three animal-aid societies. He became the secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the New England Humane Education Society, and treasurer of the Band of Mercy. (3) Joseph was committed to more than animal welfare; he involved himself in the Free Soil movement and the slavery debate, to the extent that he left Gloucester for Kansas in 1855 “to see for himself what was going on,” returning about two years later. (4)

Joseph L. Stevens, Jr. first became friends with Lane after the artist had returned from Boston and had set up a studio on Elm Stree. That same year, Joseph invited Lane to accompany him to Castine. It was the first of many such trips to the Maine coast, where Lane sketched and painted and visited with Joseph’s parents.

When Lane fell out with his brother-in-law, Joseph Stevens came to the rescue by purchasing the contested stone house from Lane and evicting the troublesome in-laws. He was also at Lane’s side when he died and was named as one of two executors in Lane’s will. In addition, he inherited two-thirds of the residual property of the estate.

Joseph’s wife Caroline died in 1886, and Joseph left Gloucester nine years later to marry Charlotte M. Todd of Milton. He remained there until his own death. He is buried in Oak Grove cemetery alongside Caroline and their infant son. Lane is also buried in their family plot.

– Stephanie Buck

(1) Joseph L. Stevens Jr., letter written as Superintendent of the Sawyer Free Library, for the 1876 Women’s Time Capsule. Gloucester Archives, CC195 and AS300.

(2) Gloucester Lyceum Records, vol. 1, 1830–1852.

(3) The New England Humane Education Society is not to be confused with the coastal lifesaving institution which was then known as the Massachusetts Humane Society. The Band of Mercy was associated with the Massachusetts SPCA.

(4) F. A. Sharf, "Fitz Hugh Lane: Visits to the Maine Coast, 1848–1855," Essex Institute Historical Collection 98, no. 2 (April 1962): 112.