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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. 261
View of Blue Hill, Maine
Blue Hill, Maine
c. 1850 Oil on canvas 20 1/8 x 30 in. (51.1 x 76.2 cm)
Private collection, Washington, D.C.
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Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
Viewpoint chart showing Lane's location when making this image
Photo: © Erik Ronnberg/U.S. Coast Survey
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
On loan to Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
Private collection, Washington, D.C.
Exhibition History
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, May 15–September 5, 1988., no. 58, ill. in color, 140, Blue Hill, Maine.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Published References
Smith, Philip Chadwick Foster. More Marine Paintings and Drawings in the Peabody Museum. Salem, MA: Peabody Museum of Salem, 1979., ill., . 41.
"Lure of the Maine Coast: Paintings by Fitz Henry Lane." Down East Magazine (October 1988)., p.57.
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., Blue Hill, Maine, illus., p.140 cat. 58.
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., p.52. ⇒ includes 
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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., pl. vii, text, p. 69, Blue Hill, Maine.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 2007., fig. 22, ill., p. 33, Blue Hill, Maine. ⇒ includes text
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Commentary
Lane did only a handful of true landscapes, where there is more land depicted than water. In spite of the relative few, they are all masterful and derive from his lithography training where he did numerous “town views” encompassing large sweeps of landscape in great detail. This view is of the town across the shallow bay with Blue Hill rising behind. It is a serene afternoon bathed in late summer light looking west from a community boat landing as the bay was too shallow for larger vessels near the town. Note Lane’s attention to the botanical detail of the pasture and shrubs in the foreground, every bit as compelling and accurate as his attention to the nautical detail of his ships.
This painting was one of two paintings commissioned by Edward Dyer Peters, a wealthy lumber merchant with business in Ellsworth, ME, and Boston (see Sailing off the Maine Coast, 1850 (inv. 305)). He had recently built a large mansion in Blue Hill which is the pink (brick) building in the distance just to the left of the foreground building’s roof in the distance. Blue Hill Bay near the town is tidal and too shallow for a working harbor, but there was an active shipbuilding industry along with lumber and granite exporting to points south.
Lane did a wonderfully precise drawing for this painting (Blue Hill, Maine, 1851 (inv. 244)) in August of 1851 on one of his Maine summer cruises along the coast with his friend Joseph Stevens.
–Sam Holdsworth