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Description: Gloucesteroil on canvas16 1/4 x 22 1/8 in. (41 x 56.2 cm.)PROVENANCEPrivate collection, Rochester, New YorkIn 1848 Fitz Hugh Lane moved both his studio and his permanent residence from Boston to his native Gloucester. His return was influenced by the completion in 1846 of a branch of the Eastern Railroad, opening the port of Gloucester to commercial development and creating opportunities for a painter and lithographer of established reputation. Gloucester in the late 1840s and 1850s was an area of bustling trade and tourism, speculation, and rapidly rising land prices. Lane's interest in the business and civic affairs of the area is reflected both in his involvement in local politics and the subjects of his paintings from this time period, which focus on specific views of the coast and the everyday activities of the shipping industry.Beached for Repairs is one of a four-part view of Gloucester Harbor done in 1848 from Lane's land on Duncan's Point, where he was to build a stone Gothic Revival home two years later. The other paintings in the series, from east to west along the south-facing shore of the harbor, are On the Wharves, Gloucester Harbor (Cape Ann Historical Association); the present painting; Gloucester Harbor - - 1848 (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia); and The Fort and Ten Pound Island, Gloucester, 1848 (Newark Museum). The man-made stone pier used by small boats at low tide, appearing at the left of the present picture, is seen at the right of the Virginia Museum painting.The painting depicts the tarring of a two-masted fishing schooner on the beach at low tide. One skiff is being stocked as a second approaches two schooners riding high in the water, typical of those used in the cod fishery off Gloucester. After drying and salting, the cod was stored in barrels and shipped in boats such as the three-master in the distance, usually to Caribbean ports in exchange for fruits, vegetables and salt. In 1847, Lane had painted a more panoramic view of Gloucester, from a different vantage point in the harbor (now in the collection of the Cape Ann Historical Association), that included a similar tarring scene.Lane's familiarity with the routines of marine trade was matched by his original and knowledgeable delineation of the forms and riggings of the boats themselves. In an essay "Imagery and Types of Vessels", written for the 1988 National Gallery exhibition, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, Erik A. R. Ronnberg, Jr., discusses Lane's unconventional attributes as a ship portraitist:His paintings of ships are marked by a skillful use of perspective and an understanding of its effect on these objects of complex form. This is hardly surprising for an artist of the luminist movement, for the play of light on a hull and the reflections and shadows that reveal its contours are most interesting when viewed from unusual angles. Lane showed no hesitation to place ships in very difficult poses, and... was able to convey the geometry of the hulls and the perspective of the rigging very convincingly...In sharp contrast to the busy, illustrative quality of many mid-century genre and marine paintings, the anecdotal aspect of Beached for Repairs is minimized. Lane freezes the moment's activity in the cool silvery light of a Gloucester morning. The luminous sky reflected in the boat's hull, the calm waters of the bay, and the windless sails, create a sense of stillness that prefigures Lane's later seascapes, in which the human presence is subordinated to the ordered serenity of nature.We are grateful to William H. Trayes of Gloucester for his assistance in the research of this painting.