On Art

...Fortunately, Alfred Mansfield Brooks, one of the patrician, old-guard figures in town and president of the Cape Ann Historical Society, began to collect and catalogue Lane's works as well as write about him for local historical publications The result is that the society now owns the largest single public collection of Lane's art in the country??some 35 oils and 100 drawings and water-colors Considering the value of Lane's work (it can be compared favorably, I think, to Winslow Homer's), Brooks did a marvelous job of cultural conservation...

...Lane was stricken with an illness that left him permanently crippled Such was the condition of medical knowledge that early historians attributed the illness to his having eaten seeds or fruit of the "Apple Peru " Since that was apparently the local name for the tomato, Wilmerding more sensibly suggests that he may have been a victim of poliomyelitis...

...That, however, is local history Lane's national reputation has been achieved during the past 15 years My own regard for him has pretty much followed in its wake I first noticed his paintings in the mid-'50s at a showing of the IN and IN Karolik collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts The Karohks, a European couple who anticipated the vogue for 19th-century American art by several years, had put together an impressive collection, including some fine examples by Lane I was particularly struck by his "Ships in Ice off Ten Pound Island," a view of Gloucester Harbor that verified stories I had heard about old-fashioned winters The harbor, it was said, would freeze over so solidly people could walk all the way out to that middling-sized island, named after its purchase price from the Indians The idea seemed almost surreal, but here was Lane's picture with its boats locked fast in a sheet of ice and people wandering about in the frozen landscape It was more than the local color??such familiar sites as Freshwater Cove and Dolliver's Neck??that intrigued me, however Lane's paintings had a stunning clarity and a quality of light that seemed timeless, as if his scenes had been preserved in amber...

...The Ash Can School artists George Bellows, John Sloan and Maurice Prendergast summered there Edward Hopper was attracted to the Victorian frame houses and the isolated lighthouses during the '20s Marsden Hartley was lured by the abandoned pastures of Dogtown Common, where the first settlers had lived In the '30s, Stuart Davis found inspiration in the bustling activities of the waterfront...

...Aside from making a name for himself in Boston and New York exhibitions, Lane enjoyed a considerable reputation in Gloucester Early newspaper notices??when he was offering his subscription punts for sale—simply referred to him as "an artist belonging to this place' (an apt description, as it turned out, since Lane's Gloucester scenes are among his best works) In later years, these papers treated him kindly, describing his new paintings in glowing terms He was, it seems, one of the city's cultural ornaments...

...A pencil portrait of Lane, done in 1835 by a colleague, shows him sketching??lean, intelligent-looking, with a somewhat romantic expression of suffering on his face The lower half of his body is discreetly hidden behind a screen of stones...

...For the remainder of his life, Lane was obliged to get around on crutches Despite the disability, he managed to sketch his subjects along the rocky shoreline of Gloucester and, with the aid of friends, to make painting expeditions to Maine, New Bedford and New York...

...At his best, Lane is a master of his genre...

...After Lane and continuing well into the 20th century??perhaps his paintings were partly responsible??Gloucester was a haven for artists The topography of Cape Ann has great variety a formidable coastline with pounding surf after storms, sheltered beaches and dunes, small off-shore islands, a busy harbor Originally, its picturesque fishing shacks, its wharves with drying seine nets, were an attraction for both amateur and professional painters A number of important artists have worked there Winslow Homer and the American Impressionists Twachtman, Childe Hassam and J Alden Weir had Gloucester studios in the 19th century...

...Lane's view of the local scenery is, possibly, the native's view, drawn more to the everyday aspects of the scene—ships in the still port, small boats in quiet coves??than to obviously dramatic or picturesque effects (though he did, on occasion, paint shipwrecks) Principally, it is the quality of the light that provides the drama in his late paintings—the sparkling light of noon on the water, the dimming light of a northern evening, flushed with a cold pink Occasionally the calm of his pictures—the paintings of Brace's Rock and Norman's Woe, for example??seems unnatural and slightly menacing, but those were sites that had a history of being treacherous for navigation...

...Wilmerding places the development of Lane's mature style during the 1850s By then he had achieved a remarkable proficiency in his harbor views and ship paintings He evidently felt confident enough about his prospects for making a living to return permanently to Gloucester, where he built a home and studio in the waterfront district Modeled after the House of Seven Gables, though in bleak granite, it stood on a low hill overlooking the harbor, affording a view of the brisk traffic of merchant ships and fishing vessels...

...a kind of grim amenity standing isolated in a small park...

...Lane (1804-65) was born and spent much of his professional life in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the New England fishing town where I grew up As a youth I knew nothing about him Though I may have glanced at one or two of his paintings??strictly local stuff??hanging in the Sawyer Free Library, my recollections are chiefly of the ornate gilded frames which added a touch of luxury to its cozy and perennially cramped quarters In any event, my friends and I were too much exercised over the paintings of Picasso and the music of Stravinsky to be engaged by such antiquarian concerns...

...If he lacks the range and variety of Homer, his work nonetheless has undeniable gifts I feel a certain local pride in watching his reputation move out, now, beyond its parochial bounds...

...Although some of the details of Lane's life are still hazy??he seems to have left no record of his own views on art??there is enough material here to offer an absorbing account of the man His ancestors were among the 17th-century settlers on Cape Ann From the beginning, the family was associated with the sea, his father was a sailmaker As an infant...

...Wilmerding, who also produced a 1964 study and checklist of the artist's production for the Essex Institute of Salem, has now written the first detailed monograph on Lane (Fitz Hugh Lane, Praeger, 203 pp , illustrated, $15 00) The writing is somewhat dry and factual, but the volume is of unquestionable merit It places Lane securely in his period and relates him to the painters of his time, it includes a good deal of new material in the form of letters about the artist and contemporary newspaper accounts of his activities In addition, the author has tracked down 50 paintings besides the 138 he had previously catalogued, providing a substantial oeuvre on which to judge Lane's particular gifts, and the book includes a useful list of pieces in public collections...

...Gloucester still contains a somewhat moribund artists' colony, but it is farer, nowadays, to see painters setting up then easels along Bass Rocks or on the wharves than it was when I was growing up Styles in art, of course, have changed Artists no longer feel obliged to work outdoors, painting or sketching from the motif...

...Considered one of the "Luminists"??group of mid-19th century U S painters who, like the French Impressionists but with less radical formal intentions, were principally concerned about light??Lane today seems well on the way to becoming established as a master (local boy makes good, after more than a century) A sizable retrospective of his output was held at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1966, he figured prominently in Barbara Novak's recent American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, and John Wilmerding devoted an interesting chapter to him in his authoritative 1968 History of American Marine Painting...

...Unable to pursue normal activities as a child, Lane took to drawing There was little art in Gloucester and no professional training was available, yet he became so capable a draftsman that he was apprenticed to a lithography firm in Boston His early commercial work (cover illustrations for sheet music like The Salem Mechanick Light Infantry Quick Step, The Nahant Quadrilles) gives one a quaint idea of the cultural airs of the period He was soon involved in more ambitious projects??panoramic views of Gloucester and other cities, a comically pretentious memorial print of President William Henry Harrison??most of them sold on a subscription basis In 1840, he first began to paint seriously...

...Following Lane's death the building served as a city jail for a while and came to be known locally as "the old stone jug " It was the one thing spared in a recent urban renewal project that replaced the surrounding seedy old waterfront buildings with even less interesting commercial structures But at least it has survived??unlike the charming Rocky Neck studio of J H Twachtman, demolished several years ago...