Catalog entry

Commentary

One of many views Fitz Henry Lane painted of the waterfront of his hometown, Gloucester Harbor demonstrates the artist’s mature style in its quiet repose and dominant luminous sky. Lane painted this view from Brookbank (the summer residence of Samuel E. Sawyer, one of his most important patrons), located on the Cape Ann shore south of Gloucester. The prosperous town appears at a serene distance across the smooth waters of the outer harbor, framed by the Old Fort on the left and the low hump of Ten Pound Island near the middle of the canvas. The almost still water reflects the clear light of the twilight sky, while shadows dim the curving shore to the left and the foreground of pebbly shore, which is strewn with boulders and the remains of discarded boats, a barrel, and a fish trap. Two men conversing on the beach and a fisherman in a small boat in the middle distance animate the quiet scene.

Gloucester Harbor, with its flat expanse of calm water, low horizon, glowing sky, and darker framing elements of land or tall ships, is typical of Lane’s shore scenes. In such later works, painted beginning in the mid-1850s, the accurate representation of individual vessels is subordinated to the unity of the entire composition, achieved partly through the emphasis on pervasive light and the contrasting relative darkness of solid foreground objects. In Gloucester Harbor, the transient effect of declining daylight and its potential for emotional expressiveness become as much Lane’s subject as the harbor itself. This approach, applied to coastal themes, is typical of the trend in landscape painting at the time and is dubbed “luminism” by modern scholars.

Lane painted numerous views of Gloucester Harbor from a variety of viewpoints, many showing the activity of men and vessels concerned with trade and fishing, the industries upon which the town had flourished since its establishment in the early seventeenth century. Even his busiest images, however, present Gloucester as a quiet, unhurried place by focusing on the harbor and by showing the town itself only from a distance, across placid waters, as it is here in the Terra Foundation’s painting. In fact, Gloucester was changing rapidly in the years Lane painted it intensively. The extension of the eastern railroad to the town in 1847 not only opened the local fisheries to larger markets but brought tourism to Gloucester and the nearby picturesque shoreline of Cape Ann. Lane profited by these changes, for he found patrons such as Sawyer among the town’s new summer residents. His paintings make no reference to such developments but preserve the Gloucester of his youth: a quiet fishing village.

– Terra Museum of American Art

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