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Catalog entry

inv. 36
Lumber Brig in High Seas
Brigantine Under Heavy Weather, Clipper Ship in High Seas
n.d.
Oil on canvas
10 1/8 x 16 in. (25.7 x 40.6 cm)
No inscription found

Commentary

Lane’s obvious love of sailing ships of all kinds is a constant across all his work. No matter how humble a ship may be—whether large or small, new or old—its essence is captured. Lane shows them all as vital, dignified beings, somehow alive in their miraculous interaction with sea and wind. Nowhere is this more evident than in this humble painting of an old lumber schooner straining through a high sea. 

One imagines that Lane had just as much admiration and affinity for this vessel as for the elegant clippers he painted on commission. Coming from Gloucester—not a prosperous port in Lane’s day—he knew this to be what boats were: humble, somewhat ungainly, but true and solid. They needed to be if they were to survive the years at sea for which they were destined.

This hermaphrodite brig is an everyday boat, old and tired, with sails patched from years of use. She is probably coming from Penobscot Bay in Maine or down the coast from Canada, and she hauls a load of lumber—a commodity always saleable, though barely profitable. She makes no glamorous trips to foreign ports or to high-stakes fishing on the Grand Banks. Her lot is just banging up and down the coast year after year until she finally finds a reef or her seams split and she is grounded on a sand bar somewhere and left to rot.

There were thousands of vessels like this built in Lane’s era and beyond; coasters like this continued plying their trade in Maine right up into the 1920s. Such a ship was the equivalent of today's local delivery truck. 

Lumber Brig in High Seas is quite small (10 x 16 inches), unsigned and undated, yet unmistakably Lane in every element. Note the detailed rigging, impeccably drawn and always accurate—a ship could not sail without every piece of rigging in its proper place. The sails show all their weight and age, patches included. The sea is foaming white as the waves churn around the bow; the wave shadows in the foreground set up the dramatic dark-and-light contrast so central to Lane’s work.

Who could this work have been painted for? Certainly not for some wealthy ship's owner or captain with a name and a reputation to burnish. This ship has no name evident, no flags, no figurehead; she’s just another anonymous working vessel. Yet for all the mundanity of her role, she is in the midst of high drama and risk. The men on board are using all their skill and daring to bring the ship and crew safely through, though that can never be guaranteed. When she gets to port there will be no celebrations, no congratulatory meetings on the dock—just another unloading and loading, and back up the coast she goes.

– Sam Holdsworth

Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)

James Stacy, Gloucester, Mass.
Joseph Garland, M.D., Gloucester, Mass., 1941 (by bequest)
Anne K. Garland (by descent)
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass., February 1, 1990

Exhibition History

No known exhibitions.

Published References

No known published references.

Related historical materials

Vessel Types
Maritime & Other Industries & Facilities
Citation: "Lumber Brig in High Seas, n.d. (inv. 36)." Fitz Henry Lane Online. Cape Ann Museum. http://fitzhenrylaneonline.org/catalog/entry.php?id=36 (accessed March 29, 2024).
Record last updated November 17, 2015. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.
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