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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. 188
Sloop with Study of Masthead Rigging
1850s Graphite on paper 1 sheet of paper 10 3/4 x 14 1/4 in. (27.3 x 36.2 cm) Signed lower right (in pencil): Lane del.
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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): 46 [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. 122, Date given as c. 1857.
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., ill. in b/w p. 81 fig. 18, Sloop with Study of Masthead Rigging.
Commentary
This drawing may be one of Lane’s sketches made while observing the New York Yacht Club’s regatta at New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1856. The subject is a very typical example of the shallow-draft centerboard sloops which made up the most popular class of large racing yachts in New York. Lane’s drawing may show the vessel at anchor, either prior to, or following the race.
The winner in the first class (largest yachts) was the “Julia”, owned by J. M. Waterbury, who commissioned George Steers to design and build her in 1854. Waterbury was a founding member of the New York Yacht Club, who had commissioned Steers to design and build the racing sloop “Una” for him in 1847. This drawing may well be of “Julia”, but other sloops of her class were so similar in appearance and detail, that it could have been used as a typical example of the type. (Ref. 1)
Throughout the race, “Julia” led the other yachts in her class and led all other yachts in the regatta at the finish line. She is almost certainly the sloop in the left foreground of New York Yacht Club Regatta (1), 1856 (inv. 66), and while nearly identical to the sloop in the center foreground of Camden Mountains from the South Entrance to Harbor (inv. 290), the two fly very different owner’s pennants, probably the only way sloops of this design can be told apart in this series of paintings. (Ref. 2)
When Lane made this drawing, he evidently found that the sloop’s rig was too large for the sheet of paper he had chosen. The inset drawing (upper right) shows the topmast from its doubling with the lower mast to its cap.
–Erik Ronnberg
References:
1. William P. Stephens, “Traditions & Memories of American Yachting” (Camden, Maine: International Marine Publishing Company, 1981), pp. 44, 272, 274.
2. “The U. S. Nautical Magazine, and Naval Journal” (New York: Oliver W. Griffiths, 1856). Vol. V, October, 1856 to March, 1857, pp. 15-17.