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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. 399
Approaching Storm, Owl's Head
Schooners before an Approaching Storm off Owl's Head; Schooners Before Approaching Storm; Ships and an Approaching Storm Off Owl's Head, Maine
1860 Oil on canvas 24 x 39 5/8 in. (61 x 100.6 cm) Signed and dated lower right
Private collection
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Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
John D. Rockefeller Collection
Private collection
Exhibition History
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, May 15–September 5, 1988., no. 51, ill. in color, 117, Approaching Storm, Owl's Head.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Published References
Wilmerding, John, ed. American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1980., ills., cover, pl. 9, p. 60, fig. 73, p. 80, text, pp. 84, 102, 111, Ships and an Approaching Storm Off Owl's Head, Maine.
"Lure of the Maine Coast: Paintings by Fitz Henry Lane." Down East Magazine (October 1988).
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., ill. in b/w p.96, ill. in color p. 116, cat. 51; p.151 fig.30, Approaching Storm, Owl's Head.
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.65. ⇒ includes 
text
text
Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape Painting, 1825–1875. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995., no. 47, p. 96, Schooners Before Approaching Storm.
Moore, Thomas R. "'This Magic Moonshine': Fitz Hugh Lane and Nathaniel Hawthorne." American Art XII (Fall 1998). ⇒ includes text
text
Wilton, Andrew, and Tim Barringer. American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820–1880. London: Tate Publishing, 2002., cat. 70, ill. in color, p. 197, det., p. 186, text, pp. 196, 254, 270, Schooners before an Approaching Storm off Owl's Head.
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. 78, Schooners before an Approaching Storm off Owl's Head.
Commentary
One of Lane’s most dramatic works, this is a masterful depiction of a ship preparing for the approaching storm that is already lashing the distant vessels on the horizon. The ship is becalmed in a flat sea and haloed in an unearthly light while the men run through the rigging furling the sails. Lane’s depiction of the rigging in bright white—like a spider’s web against the black sky—contributes to the sense of the unreality of the vessel, entirely apart from the world around it, bathed in a glorious light. Yet the scene is entirely real—Lane has captured a fleeting moment often seen on the Maine coast in extraordinary detail. The painting is dated 1860; John Wilmerding has noted that in paintings of this period, Lane’s “stark tonal contrasts coincide with the literal storm clouds and civil fires of a nation at war with itself.” Certainly the tranquility and optimism so fundamental to Lane’s work, and by extension the nation, can here be seen to be threatened in an allegorical way. Yet with Lane one can never be sure of the overt statement, his subtlety and fidelity to the moment are so true as to leave further interpretation to the viewer.
– Sam Holdsworth