Catalog entry

Commentary

This very fine ship portrait of 1853 has helped to rectify the one-hundred-year-old misnomer of the artist Fitz Henry Lane as Fitz "Hugh" Lane. After Lane’s death in 1865, his work had fallen out of favor as European and romantic tastes became fashionable. He was all but forgotten until some of his work was included in a show of marine art mounted by the India House, a private club in lower New York City that was founded in 1914—nearly fifty years after Lane's death. As biographers have noted, there are multiple references in the early twentieth century to Fitz "Hugh" Lane. By the 1940s, all further scholarship referenced these earlier sources.

The painting is signed in the lower right corner: "Fitz Henry Lane, Gloucester, Mass. 1853." (See below.) This is one of only two known works signed "Fitz Henry Lane." Interestingly, the other is also a New York ship portrait from 1854, The "Golden State" Entering New York Harbor, 1854 (inv. 238). "Golden State" was a clipper ship with the same ownership, Chambers and Heiser, and they presumably commissioned both paintings.

Perhaps Lane wanted to be sure his full name and address were known in New York. This was the largest and most important art market, and he was just breaking into it. He typically signed his paintings "F.H. Lane" or "Fitz H. Lane" and was certainly well known by those abbreviated initials in Boston and Gloucester.

All we know about the clipper ship "Sweepstakes" is that she was built in 1853 by Daniel and Aaron Westervelt of New York for Chambers and Heiser of New York. She was the last and largest clipper ship built by the Westervelts. She went ashore in the Strait of Malacca and was condemned at Batavia in May 1862.

This is quite a large ship's portrait, fully four feet wide, and shows all of Lane’s mastery of the genre. The ship is shown hove-to in a typical profile, but Lane has covered only half the canvas with her. In the right half he shows a full-rigged ship, possibly a naval vessel, heading away on a diagonal, giving depth to the composition. A hermaphrodite brig angling towards the clipper adds additional interest. In the foreground is a square-sterned yawl boat with a man standing in the stern who is clearly hailing the "Sweepstakes."

The location is unknown, but it may well be in the broad bay at the mouth of New York harbor. It is a blustery day with scudding clouds and a frothy chop in the very green water. The ship is flying a blue-and-white swallowtail pennant with a red tail—the house flag of Chambers and Heiser—on its foremast. An American flag flies off its stern gaff.

– Sam Holdsworth

Supplementary Images

Lane's signature