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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. 95
View of Gloucester from "Brookbank," the Sawyer Homestead
c. 1856 Oil on canvas 18 x 30 3/16 in. (45.7 x 76.7 cm) No inscription found
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Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)
Adelaide Procter, Gloucester, Mass.
William MacInnis, Gloucester, Mass.
Robert MacInnis, Gloucester, Mass., by 1975
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1975
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1977
Exhibition History
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, New York, The American Experience, October 27–November 27, 1976., no. 30.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, May 15–September 5, 1988., no. 11, ill., p. 31.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Traveled to: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., 5–31, 1988.
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Panopticon, October 5, 2002–August 17, 2003.
Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, Florida, Ships and Shorelines: William Bradford and Nineteenth-Century American Marine Painting, January 30–May 30, 2010.
Published References
McCormick, Gene E. "Fitz Hugh Lane, Gloucester Artist, 1804–1865." Art Quarterly 15, no. 4 (Winter 1952). ⇒ includes 
text
text
Novak, Barbara. "Fitz Hugh Lane, Gloucester Artist, 1804–1865." In American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience. New York: Praeger, 1969, pp. 110–24.
Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane. New York: Praeger, 1971.
[no title]. Antiques (February 1976)., ill. in color, p. 222.
The American Experience. New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1976., no. 30.
[no title]. Antiques (August 1977)., ill., p. 211.
Art Journal 37, no. 1 (Fall 1977).
Butler, Joseph T. "Recent Acquisitions at Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute." The Connoisseur 195 (June 1977).
Pittsburgher Magazine (July 1977)., ill., p. 63.
Czestochowski, Joseph. The American Landscape Tradition: A Study and Gallery of Paintings. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982., no. 87, ill., p. 91.
Crossman, Carl L. "Lithographs of Fitz Hugh Lane." In American Maritime Prints, edited by Elton W. Hall. New Bedford, MA: The Whaling Museum by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, 1987, pp. 63–94. The Proceedings of the Eighth Annual North American Print Conference held at the Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass., May 6–7, 1977., p.86. ⇒ includes text
text
Wilmerding, John. Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988., no. 11, ill. in color, p. 31.
Strazdes, Diana J. American Paintings and Sculpture to 1945 in the Carnegie Museum of Art. New York: Hudson Hills Press; in association with the Carnegie Museum of Art, 1992., pp. 308–09.
Slawek, Tadeusz. Revelations of Gloucester: Charles Olson, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Writing of the Place. New York: Peter Lang, 2003., Il. 4.
Bradford, William, and Lucinda H. Gedeon. Ships and Shorelines: William Bradford and Nineteenth Century American Marine Painting. Vero Beach, CA: Vero Beach Museum of Art, 2010., ill., p. 32, text, pp. 60–61.
Commentary
Lane made several paintings of Fresh Water Cove and the ancestral home—Brookbank—of Gloucester businessman Samuel Sawyer. Sawyer was a patron of Lane's and a dedicated supporter of the Gloucester Lyceum, which became the Sawyer Free Library. This painting commonly has been given a date of c. 1856, although Brookbank has architectural changes in this picture which are not evident in a later work, Brookbank, The Sawyer Homestead, 1860 (inv. 216) of 1860, suggesting that this picture was painted closer to 1860. Additionally the smokestack for the Burnham Brothers marine railway appears to be much taller than in Three Master on the Gloucester Railways, 1857 (inv. 29).
Brookbank abutted the public landing at Fresh Water Cove and it was that tract of land on which Lane either sat or stood when he did the drawings that correspond to this painting and others in the series. Although most of the paintings of Brookbank have drawings that directly correspond with them, no such drawing is known to exist for this painting.
As one of the earliest pockets of settlement in Gloucester, Fresh Water Cove was a logical and practical place for a public landing to be located, and indeed one was laid out there by the town’s founders. It was over this tract of land that granite from the upland quarry, located in what is now Ravenswood, was transported to awaiting sloops in the Cove. The landing was also where shore fishermen would access their boats and carry supplies to and from their homes. Public landings were designated across Cape Ann. Public access to the water has gradually constricted in recent decades, but even during Fitz Henry Lane’s lifetime, landowners guarded their property rights fiercely, making public landings all the more important.
– Martha Oaks