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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. 277
Castine Harbor and Town
1851 Graphite and watercolor panorama on two joined sheets of moderately thick, cream wove paper 10 1/4 x 31 1/4 in. (26 x 79.4 cm) 18 3/4 x 39 1/4 in. (47.6 x 99.7 cm.) Inscribed upper left (in brown ink): Castine harbor and town from American battery of 1779 at Hainey's Point, a short way northerly of Henry's Point of later time. / Fitz Henry Lane of Gloucester, Mass., made this sketch for Noah Brooks in August 1851, and on its acceptance an oil painting. / In his will of date Nov. 30, 1900 Mr. Brooks bequeathed the painting to the town of Castine for the public library.
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Related Work in the Catalog
Supplementary Images
Detail
Photo: Marcia Steele
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Detail
Photo: Marcia Steele
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Detail
Photo: Marcia Steele
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Detail
Photo: Marcia Steele
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Detail
Photo: Marcia Steele
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Detail
Photo: Marcia Steele
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Proposed viewpoint of Lane when creating the picture. Viewpoint plottings by Erik Ronnberg using the... [more] 1879 U.S. Coast Survey chart of Camden and Rockport, Maine.
Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
Maxim Karolik, Newport, R.I.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1954
Exhibition History
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Watercolors & Drawings, 1800–1875., October 18, 1962–January 6, 1963.
DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, Fitz Hugh Lane: The First Major Exhibition, March 20–April 17, 1966., no. 59.
Traveled to: Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine, 30–6, 1966.
Traveled to: Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, Maine, 30–6, 1966.
John Wilmerding, William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1805, July 12–September 15, 1974., no. 8, lent by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, American Drawings and Watercolors from West to Wyeth, April 28–July 8, 1979.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, November 21, 1988–June 12, 1989.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, Awash in Color: Homer, Sargent, and the Great American Watercolor, April 28–August 15, 1993.
Published References
M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Watercolors & Drawings, 1800–1875. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1962., no. 489, fig. 108.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane: The First Major Exhibition. Lincoln, MA: De Cordova Museum; in association with Colby College Art Museum, 1966., no. 59. ⇒ includes 
text
text
Wilmerding, John. "Fitz Hugh Lane's Paintings Down East." Down East (April 1966)., ill., p. 25. ⇒ includes text
text
Fitz Hugh Lane 1804-1865. Rockland, ME: William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, 1974., no. 8.
Reed, Sue Welsh, and Carol Troyen. Awash in Color: Homer, Sargent, and the Great American Watercolor. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1993., no. 12, pp. 27–29.
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. 51. ⇒ 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. 44.
Commentary
There are very few known examples of Lane working in watercolor. Other than his very early work, Burning of the Packet Ship "Boston", 1830 (inv. 82), in which watercolor was the finished medium, he seemed to use watercolor as a way of adding detail that graphite could not convey (see, for example, Gloucester from the Outer Harbor, 1852 (inv. 72)). According to the inscription on this watercolor—it was added in the early twentieth century—Lane used the medium to communicate with purchaser Noah Brooks about the composition of the commission.
Noah Brooks was born in Castine in 1830. At age eighteen, he left Castine for Boston, and eventually became a successful newspaper reporter, journalist, and author. Periodically he returned to Castine, as he did in the summer of 1848—a visit he wrote about in a diary now located at the Castine Historical Society. It is possible that he met Lane in Castine in the summer of 1851 when Lane was visiting the Stevenses, or that they were introduced in Boston or elsewhere through mutual acquaintances. In any case, the inscription indicates that Brooks commissioned a painting for which Lane made this preparatory watercolor. Later photographs show the finished oil painting hanging in Brooks's home.
Most of Lane’s images of Castine depict the town from an island in the harbor, or from an elevated perspective above the town to the north. The two Brooks works adopt a viewpoint southeast of town, and depict an expansive view of the harbor, the lighthouse on Dice Head, and Penobscot Bay toward the Camden Mountains. (One other drawing Castine from Heights East of Negro Island, 1855 (inv. 168) shows a perspective similar to the composition of these works). In the watercolor, the foreground contains the shore, detailed foliage, and a leafless tree. In the final painting Lane eliminated these elements, placing the viewer at the edge of the water, and making the water of Camden Harbor and Penobscot Bay the subject of the composition.
– Melissa Geisler Trafton