WEST JONES ADVISORS

FITZ HENRY LANE (American, 1804–1865)

Ship Taking on a Pilot in Boston Harbor

oil on canvas, circa 1852
11 1/8 x 18 1/8 inches
16 1/2 x 24 inches framed

The American marine painter Fitz Henry Lane (1804—1865) was “our first native marine painter of real stature.” Born the son of a sailmaker in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Lane contracted polio at an early age, leaving him partially incapacitated and reliant on a wheelchair. Lane would develop a keen eye for the remarkable variety of sailcraft that frequented the waters off of Cape Ann, Boston Harbor, New York Harbor, and Maine, remaining largely a shoreline observer—a situation that may have actually stimulated the fineness of his observation. He met the recently emigrated British marine artist Robert Salmon at the Boston lithography studio of William S. Pendelton. Under Salmon’s beneficial influence, Lane would evolve a style of painting, later to be named “Luminism,” that at the peak of his practice in the 1850s, embodied an expression of transcendent lucidity and captured moments of “stilled time.”

Lane’s Ship Taking a Pilot in Boston Harbor captures the energy and bluster of wind and wave during a brisk blow in Boston Harbor. The distinctive silhouette of the Massachusetts Statehouse on Beacon Hill is easily identifiable along the familiar Boston horizon. The black hull of the clipper floats elegantly as it awaits the small pilot boat in the left foreground. The ship just left of center is “hove-to” waiting to take on a pilot which is to her left with shortened sail in the breeze. The ship is sitting at an angle flying an American flag with a red pennant at the top of her main mast. The two-masted schooner pilot boat is heading towards the ship to guide it into Boston harbor. There is a figure near the fore mast wearing a red shirt—a Lane hallmark. The highlighted water around the ship is very dramatic and the light and the sea continues to Boston Harbor beyond. Along the horizon one can recognize the Massachusetts Statehouse on Beacon Hill and various church steeples. A pleasing variety of watercraft appear in the distance close to shore. Along the shoreline a darker cloud bank forms while in the middle ground a brilliant blue sky with puffy white clouds spreads its dazzling light across the waves.

The painting does not seem to be a commission for an owner or master as there is no name on the ship or pennant. Likely painted in the late 1840s or early 1850s, Lane’s masterful painting distills the freshness and vigor of a great ship under sail in Boston Harbor.