Historical Materials: People

Benjamin Champney was born in 1807 in New Hampshire. Champney started his career as a lithographer's apprentice in Boston, where he had a studio in the Tremont Temple, as did Lane. They knew each other during their mutual years in Boston, and, as is indicated on one of Lane's drawings, maintained their acquaintance after Lane moved back to Gloucester. 

There are records that Champney was in Boston in 1846 and again in 1849; both times he had a studio in the Tremont Temple. Champney placed Lane in the Tremont Temple in the latter year, after Lane’s return to Gloucester. Champney’s mother died in Woburn in the summer of 1849, and “that winter I took a studio in the old Tremont Temple to paint pictures from my summer studies. The rooms on the upper floor were occupied mostly by artists. Among them were ... F. H. Lane of old lithographic days, and now a marine painter.” (1)

After turning to landscape painting, Champney painted the North Conway region of New Hampshire's White Mountains. He is noted for being a forerunner among landscape painters of the White Mountains and was known for his publication, Sixty Years' Memories of Art and Artists, published c.1899. He died in 1907.

Lane and Champney's friendship continued through the years when Lane was in Gloucester. "Champney maintained his friendship with Lane for in July of 1864, the two of them drove to Folly Cove where Lane did a pencil sketch." (2)

(1) Benjamin Champney, Sixty Years' Memories of Art and Artists (Woburn, MA: privately printed, ca.1899), 99, quoted in Sarah Dunlap and Stephanie Buck. "Fitz Who? The Artist Latterly Known as Fitz Hugh Lane." The Essex Genealogist 25, no. 1 (February 2005), 53.

(2) Sarah Dunlap and Stephanie Buck, Fitz Henry Lane: Family and Friends. (Gloucester, MA: Church & Mason Publishing; in association with the Cape Ann Historical Museum, 2007), 185.