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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. 192
"General Gates" at Anchor off Our Encampment at Bar Island in Somes Sound, Mount Desert, Maine
1850 Graphite on paper 9 1/2 x 11 in. (24.1 x 27.9 cm) Inscribed across bottom (in pencil): "General Gates" at anchor off our encampment at Bar Island in Somes Sound, Mt Desert Maine / by F.H. Lane Aug. 1850; Inscribed upper right (in pencil): Lane / Tilden / Stevens / Adams
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Verso
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): 15 [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
McCormick, Gene E. "Fitz Hugh Lane, Gloucester Artist, 1804–1865." Art Quarterly 15, no. 4 (Winter 1952)., p. 293. ⇒ includes 
text
text
Paintings and Drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1974., fig. 126.
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. 97 fig. 31, "General Gates" at Anchor off Our Encampment at Bar Island in Somes Sound, Mount Desert, Maine.
Keck, Michaela. Walking in the Wilderness: The Peripatetic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Painting. Heidelberg, Germany: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2006., fig. 35, text, pp. 266–67.
Commentary
The “General Gates” is a good example of a shallop descendant, classified as a New England boat, and further modified to become a regional variant known as a Casco Bay boat. While the first examples of this variant were built in the Casco Bay region, copies were built elsewhere along the Maine Coast, a simple ketch rig (with a choice of gaff-headed sails or spritsails – but no jib) being most popular.
Penobscot Bay being an archipelago, water transport was essential for its island inhabitants, and even those who lived on the mainland, so large and isolated was the region. People in small communities were reliant on small craft to go anywhere, with only the larger ports being served by sailing packets and steamboats. Lane’s exploration of the Penobscot was dependant on the “General Gates,” the sloop “Superior,” and other small crafts for finding the places and subjects that would appear in his paintings.
In addition to this drawing, “General Gates” appears (distantly) in a second drawing View of Bar Island and Mount Desert Mountains, from the Bay in Front of Somes Settlement, 1850 (inv. 177) and a painting based thereon, Bar Island and Mt. Desert Mountains from Somes Settlement, 1850 (inv. 401).
–Erik Ronnberg
Reference:
Howard I Chapelle, “American Small Sailing Craft” (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1951), pp. 136 – 141, 152 – 155.