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Artist or Maker: Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865)
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Provenance: J.S. Earle.
Private collection, 1976.
Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2000.
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Exhibited: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Thirty-Fifth Annual Exhibition of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, April 1858, no. 317.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Frank S. Schwarz & Son, American Painting, November 1989, no. 1.
Norfolk, Virginia, The Chrysler Museum, 1991-97, on extended loan.
Norfolk, Virginia, The Chrysler Museum, Proud Possessions: A Community Collects, May 29-July 19, 1992.
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Literature: Frank S. Schwarz & Son, American Painting, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1989, no. 1, illustrated on the cover.
M. Moses, "Mary Blood Mellen and Fitz Hugh Lane," The Magazine Antiques, November 1991, p. 836, pl. XVIII, illustrated.
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Notes: Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, New Jersey
Fitz Hugh Lane was born in 1804 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where his father worked as a sail maker. For nearly his entire career, Lane painted the coast of his native New England with his earliest works depicting Gloucester harbor and its ships. In 1832 he settled in Boston, where he later established a reputation as the foremost professional marine painter in America. In 1848, Lane returned permanently to Gloucester, and soon embarked on a series of luminous marine paintings that still rank today as some of the most important contributions to American painting in the nineteenth century.
Painted in 1858, A Storm, Breaking Away, Vessel Slipping Her Cable is a bold departure from Lane's previous works; paintings that were primarily characterized by pristine harbor views and thoughtfully composed ship portraits. These elaborate studies of aerial perspective from the early 1850s underlie the formal aesthetics of his grand harbor scenes that culminated in masterful renderings characteristic of Luminism. "These evocative images, so eloquent in their prophetic silence, depict a moment in time as if frozen, and evoke a mood of transcendental silence that is an important reflection of the American imagination at mid-century." (E.A. Powell, III, "The Boston Harbor Pictures," Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 47) A Storm, Breaking Away, Vessel Clipping Her Cable, bathed in a soft glow of purple and yellow light, underscores Lane's continual interest with Luminism but more significantly shows the artist's fascination with exploring a more dramatic approach to his marine subjects.
In the present work, Lane demonstrates his unparalleled proficiency by rendering a scene with stunningly accurate detail. The intricate riggings reveal an unrivaled draftsman at work. Lane has meticulously and sharply rendered lines that appear to bear the weight of the masts and drawn sails. In a review from 1854, critic and artist Clarence Chatham Cook wrote: "His pictures delighted sailors by their perfect truth. Lane knows the name and place of every rope on a vessel; he knows the construction, the anatomy, the expression--and for a seaman every thing that sails has expression and individuality--he knows how she will stand under this rig, before this wind; how she looks stern foremost, bow foremost, to windward, to leeward, in all changes and guises..." (New York City Independent, September 7, 1854, as quoted in W.H. Gerdts, "'The Sea is His Home': Clarence Cook Visits Fitz Hugh Lane," American Art Journal, vol 17, no. 3, Summer 1985, pp. 48-9)
The bow of the ship dramatically banks against a crest of the wave and slips away from her cable. Lane successfully demonstrates his artistic prowess to convincingly render the ship with an accurate perspective and true depiction of the weighty hull crashing in the swells. Erik Ronnberg, Jr. comments: "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 difficult poses, and in most cases he was able to convey the geometry of the hulls and the perspective of the rigging very convincingly." ("Imagery and Types of Vessels," Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1988, pp. 67-8)
John Wilmerding comments that Lane's works from the 1850s were characterized by "a new severity and serenity, more open and poetic compositions." (Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, New York, 1988, p. 14) The choice of a more dynamic setting in A Storm, Breaking Away creates a heightened drama not previously found in Lane's paintings.
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