Catalog entry

Commentary

The scene in this painting closely follows Lane’s pencil drawing Camden Mountains from the South Entrance to Harbor, 1855 (inv. 171) from his 1855 trip to Penobscot Bay in the company of Joseph L. Stevens, Jr. and Joseph S. Hooper. Stevens’s notes on the drawing state that Lane made the drawing “from the boat on our return to Rockland." This is one of several subjects sketched by Lane while on a boat, in this case probably under way leaving Camden Harbor headed south-southeast. This location being in a harbor entrance channel, anchoring there would have been hazardous if not illegal.

Looking slightly west of due north, the painting frames the view of Camden Harbor with Metcalf Point at left and Negro Island (now Curtis Island) at right. Rising behind the harbor are Mount Battie (left) and Mount Megunticook (center), with the peak of Bald Rock rising in the right background. Eaton Point and the west shore of Sherman Cove are the only visible parts of the harbor waterfront. Boston Steamboat Wharf (if more clearly depicted) should lie just to the right of Metcalf Point and is the landing for the approaching coastal steamer.

Without access to railroads, Maine harbors like Camden were reliant on coastal shipping for most of their needs. Steamboats provided transportation for people and goods of high value. Bulk goods, from hay and lumber to stone and heavy machinery, came by sailing vessels of various sizes and rigs. In this painting, we see a lumber schooner whose fore-rigging and sails combine elements of both the topsail schooner and half-brig rigs. Bluff-bowed and box-like in hull form, this vessel type in all its variations was the workhorse of the coasting fleet, the need for which lasted into the twentieth century.

A variant of the coasting schooner was the scow schooner, an example of which lies off Metcalf Point. Square-ended at bow and stern, scows offered no pretensions to speed or beauty, but they served well hauling any bulk cargo over relatively short distances while keeping close to shore. This example could be carrying farm hay or salt-marsh hay in bales, kept dry with canvas tarpaulins covering the deck load.

In the left foreground is a rowing boat of the humblest sort—bluff-bowed and homely—suited more to antagonize the water than to pass through it. Perhaps this is why the owner, to provide some relief from rowing, fitted it with a mast and sail, the latter being lowered in preparation for coming ashore. The boat appears to be loaded (with firewood, perhaps) and has probably served its owner adequately over the years.

This painting is an example of Lane's suprisingly ability to turn a common scene into a poetic masterpiece. There are no more humble vessels than those he's depicted here; ungraceful, battered, and lying low in the water on a dead calm evening, yet they are painted as carefully and attentively as any of his great ship portraits. There are none of the full sails and graceful hulls of the clippers and merchant vessels of the typical marine masterpieces desired by patrons of the arts. One cannot imagine the thrifty Yankee owners or captains of these vessels (probably one and the same) spending a dime or a spare minute on something so frivolous as a painting.

One has to assume that Lane was painting this for his own purposes. In a match for the humbleness of the craft, he has also depicted a moment in time that is just past the brilliant glamor of the sunset. Instead he has captured a strange, dusky twilight in oranges and browns where the shadows and reflections are starting to merge with the landforms. Even the highlights of the sails are muted reflections of fading daylight, and are in a perfect tonal balance with the darkness enveloping the harbor. This painting is one of many of Lane's quiet masterpieces that needs to be seen in person to appreciate the masterful balance and harmony he has achieved in a seemingly everyday scene.   

– Erik Ronnberg, Sam Holdsworth

Related Work in the Catalog

Supplementary Images

Proposed viewpoint of Lane when creating the picture. Viewpoint plottings by Erik Ronnberg using the... [more] 1876 U.S. Coast Survey chart of Penobscot Bay.