Fitz Hugh (Henry) Lane

Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865)

The son of a Gloucester, Massachusetts, sailmaker, Fitz Hugh Lane became familiar with the sea at an early age. One of his earliest pictures, The Burning of the Packet Ship “Boston” (1830; Cape Ann Historical Association, Gloucester, Mass.), illustrates the destruction of a vessel that was struck by lightning at sea. He received his only formal artistic training during an apprenticeship at the Boston lithographic firm of Pendleton in the 1830s. Artists David Claypoole Johnston and Benjamin Champney were also employed by the firm. Lane designed trade-card signs, advertisements, and covers for sheet music for Pendleton and about 1835 sold some of his own lithographic views of Gloucester, New Bedford, and Newburyport.

Lane undoubtedly knew the marine painter Robert Salmon, who executed a few commissions for Pendleton and lived at the back of the shop in 1834. Lane's early oils were more in the English topographical tradition, which he likely learned from Salmon and other Boston painters Alvan Fisher, George Loring Brown, and Thomas Doughty. Salmon's influence is particularly recognizable in Lane's crisply detailed style. His training in lithography was also a strong influence in the development of his preference for expansive topographical views with a low horizon line, his command of drawing, and his use of light and shade to create tone.

Lane is probably best known for his Luminist views of Gloucester, where he returned in 1847. Painted in the 1850s and 1860s, these scenes exhibit Lane's interest in light and atmosphere and record the effects of weather and the times of day. After Lane's death, his style remained a significant influence for the next generation of local marine painters as well as for Luminist painters of sea and land, such as Martin Johnson Heade, and members of the Hudson River School.

The Wreck of the “Roma” (Ship Wreck off the New England Coast, Ship “Roma” in Distress, The Wreck of the Ship “Roma”), 1846

Oil on canvas, 17 7/8 x 27 in. (45.4 x 68.6 cm)

Signed (lower right): F H Lane; signed and dated (reverse, before lining)1846

Lehman Foundation, Alix W. Stanley Foundation, Stephen Lawrence Fund, and Mr. Richard Weed (1978.56)

The shipwreck motif was especially in vogue during the Romantic period, when violent storms at sea symbolized the awesome power of natural forces against human will. Views of coastal shipwrecks corresponded to a real and ever-present threat, which even the mapping of the coastline failed to prevent. Like other marine painters of the era, such as the French artist Michele Felix Corné and the Americans Thomas Birch, Thomas Cole, and Martin Johnson Heade, Lane painted variations on the shipwreck theme.

Lane's earliest shipwreck picture, “The Burning of the Packet Ship” “Boston,” was based on eyewitness sketches. Hit by lightning at sea, the “Boston” is shown ablaze, the huge flames illuminating the night sky and flat sea and the dark smoke billowing from its stern. The horror of the scene is, however, slightly mitigated by the figures of the crew escaping in four rowboats.

A slightly later picture of a ship disaster, “Alcohol Rocks” (1842), is closer to the New Britain scene and may have been the model. This lithographed sheet-music cover is an allegorical scene of a vessel foundering on huge rocky cliffs. Its upside-down flag, emblazoned with the word Intemperance, signals distress. At the far left, safely clear of the rocks, a vessel identified as “Temperance” launches rescue boats. A sense of activity pervades the scene, as a large fully manned rowboat shoves off from shore and numerous figures scurry around the rocks and the beach to unload cargo and to aid sailors from the sinking ship.

Painted four years after “Alcohol Rocks”, “The Wreck of the “Roma”” is similar in subject and composition, but the rescue boat at left has been replaced by a large headland of rocks extending into the sea. Several rescue boats have just launched from the beach at left and are rowing out to the “Roma”, while men on shore are retrieving pieces of floating cargo washing up with the waves. “The Wreck of the “Roma”” shows a more expansive scene, with fewer men and boats engaged in saving the vessel, but a sense of urgency is present nonetheless. Dark clouds looming in the sky suggest an upcoming storm that will increase the difficulties of the rescuers and threaten the ship to break up on the rocks and large waves batter the rowboats attempting the rescue.

Lane was known for his accuracy in painting the details of various sailing vessels. His realistic effects were enhanced by the addition of figures on the shoreline or in rowboats at the foreground, which produces a sense of narrative and spatial depth. In his shipwreck scenes, Lane almost always focuses on the view from shore--the rescue attempts of the rowboats, the bystanders and survivors on the beach, the men retrieving floating cargo. The danger, drama, loss of life, and the power of nature typical in most Romantic shipwrecks are downplayed in favor of the hustle-bustle of the event.

Because of the realism of the New Britain scene, the precedent set by the painting of the “Boston, the Wreck of the “Roma”” and the visibility of the ship’s name on its stern could be the depiction of an actual shipwreck. However, searches through records of ships' registers have produced no evidence of a ship by this name.(1)

In the 1850s Lane's style underwent a change, and his shipwreck scenes begin to focus as much on the effects of weather, atmosphere, light, and specific times of day as they do on human activity on the shore. These late works are often categorized as Luminist, and Lane is seen, along with Martin Johnson Heade, as one of the major proponents of this style of nineteenth-century landscape painting.

MAS

Notes:

1. Neither the National Archives nor the Massachusetts Archives could find any information relating to a ship “Roma”. One explanation for this lack of documentation is an 1876 fire in the Boston customs house, which destroyed many records. It is also possible that Lane changed the name of the ship or that he was not portraying an actual event.