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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. 24
Bear Island, Northeast Harbor
1855 Oil on canvas 16 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (41.9 x 59.7 cm) Initialed verso: F.H.L.
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass., Gift of Alice D. Stevens (Mrs. George B. Stevens), 1964 (1799.3)
On view at the Cape Ann Museum
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Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
Overall infrared image reveals Lane's delicate underdrawing in the island, trees and buildings. Note... [more] the distant sailboat at left was added over the background and was not underdrawn. Enlarge the image to see more detail in the underdrawing. – Marcia Steele
Photo: J. Neubecker, Cleveland Museum of Art
© Cape Ann Museum
© Cape Ann Museum
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
the Artist, Gloucester, Mass.
Joseph L. Stevens, Jr., Gloucester, Mass.
George B. Stevens, Gloucester, Mass.
Alice (Mrs. George B.) Stevens, Gloucester, Mass., 1940
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass., February 1964
Exhibition History
John Wilmerding, William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1805, July 12–September 15, 1974., no. 31.
Published References
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane. New York: Praeger, 1971.
Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1865. Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1974., no. 31.
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., fig. 27, ill. in b/w, p. 148, Bear Island, Northeast Harbor.
Wilmerding, John. "Fitz Hugh Lane." The Artist's Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 45–67., fig. 57, p.63. ⇒ includes 
text
text
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 2005. Reprint of Fitz Hugh Lane, by John Wilmerding. New York: Praeger, 1971. Includes new information regarding the artist's name., ill. 68, text, p. 68.
Craig, James. Fitz H. Lane: An Artist's Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006., pl. 27.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2007., fig. 26, p. 34. ⇒ includes text
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Commentary
This evanescent sunrise view is of Bear Island, which lies just outside the entrance to Northeast Harbor, Maine. The painting was taken from two very detailed drawings (below) executed by Lane in the summer of 1855. He was on one of his frequent summer cruises with his friend Joseph Stevens, in whose family this painting descended. The drawings were apparently done from a boat to the west of the island looking east toward the sunrise. The mountains of Mount Desert Island are off to the left.
Bear Island is a prominent landmark with a lighthouse on its peak, guiding vessels from the open water east of Mount Desert into a channel that accesses Northeast Harbor, Southwest Harbor, and Somes Sound. The first lighthouse was a wooden structure built in 1838 that partially burned in 1852. It was rebuilt in 1854 with a circular brick tower—shown here by Lane—replacing the wooden one.
The sun is just about to rise over the horizon and an intense smoky pink glow pervades every surface and particle of air. A double-ended New England boat with two masts is being rowed vigorously towards the viewer while a square-stern sloop lies at anchor with its gaff boom slackened and its sails drying in the calm air. The man with the distinctive red hat rowing his yawl boat away from the sloop accentuates the dark horizontal waterline of the island. The mast of the sloop rises beside the lighthouse, reinforcing the vertical and dividing the composition into thirds. This is a masterfully simple and balanced composition that perfectly complements the predawn luminescence pervading the atmosphere.
Recent infrared images (below) from the Cleveland Museum of Art (best seen enlarged) show Lane's delicate underdrawing of the island, the lighthouse, the Casco Bay boat on the left, and the dory on the right. Interestingly, these infrared images show the square- or transom-stern sloop to have been superimposed over the island drawing which shows through under the sails. One can also see that the vessel in the rear of the composition, to the left of the island, was not underdrawn but instead added over the painted background. Bear Island itself appears much as in Lane's drawings Bear Island from the South, 1855 (inv. 134) and Near Southeast View of Bear Island, 1855 (inv. 135).
According to John Wilmerding, who remembers seeing Bear Island, Northeast Harbor in the 1960s prior to its cleaning, the overall cast of the painting was far more pink at the time, to stunning effect. Overcleaning likely exposed the darker reds in the underpainting. These may have been subject to some fugitive color shift due to the instability of the new cadmium reds of the era and/or to unstable sizing of the canvas which resulted in dark streaking beneath the paint. Nevertheless, the painting remains a quiet masterpiece of a summer sunrise on the coast of Maine.
– Sam Holdsworth