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26 x 41 in. (66 x 104.1 cm) painted circa 1860 Literature Jill Guthrie, ed., in celebration, works of art from the collections of princeton alumni and friends of the art museum, exhibition catalog, The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, February 22-June 8, 1997, pp. 222, 225, no. 214 (illustrated in color) exhibited princeton, The Art Museum, Princeton University, in celebration, works of art from the collections of princeton alumni and friends of the art museum, princeton university, February 22-June 8, 1997, p. 225, no. 214 (illustrated in color) Lane~dq~s career largely revolved around Gloucester harbor. Born and raised in the town, he was descended from its original seventeenth-century settlers. Partially paralyzed as an infant, the artist in later life was limited in his ability to travel, but this encouraged him to concentrate upon subjects close at hand. His career and art are today often considered virtually synonymous with the active port and its vicinity. As John Wilmerding has observed, "from the beginning, both Gloucester and the Lane family were involved in fishing and the sea" (fitz hugh lane, New York, 1971, p. 17). The proximity and accessibility of the water undoubtedly contributed to Lane~dq~s attraction to the subject, as he could survey it without hiking up mountains or across the countryside, as the Hudson River School landscapists did. ship in fog, gloucester harbor depicts Ten Pound Island, a common subject in Lane~dq~s work and outpost of Gloucester~dq~s inner harbor. The work is a radiant example of the artist~dq~s treatment of his native landscape. Ironically, the work also demonstrates the internationalism of Lane~dq~s luminist idiom. For a disabled artist whose geography ranged primarily from Boston to the coast of Maine, considering the international sympathies of his art may appear far-fetched. Nevertheless, many of Lane~dq~s works suggest either an awareness of, or relationship with, the art of the German Caspar David Friedrich (see mist, Fig. 1), the Russian Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, and the Danish Christian Ko_bke, not to mention their British peer Joseph Mallord William Turner, among others. Theodore Stebbins has shown that all of these artists exhibited in New York, Boston and Philadelphia throughout the mid-century, and doubtless came to Lane~dq~s attention as they did to the other American luminist painters. Despite Lane~dq~s relatively minimal travel (he never traveled to Europe, for instance, as did so many American artists of his time), his art nevertheless contributed the perspective from Gloucester to a cosmopolitan discourse of luminism. ship in fog, gloucester harbor is virtually identical in location and sentiment to the artist~dq~s gloucester harbor at sunset (late 1850s, Fig. 2), offering both the location and an approximate date for the present work. Furthermore, the two men in the rowboat of ship in fog are virtually identical to the figures in his entrance of somes sound from southwest harbor, 1852 (private collection), including their rowboat, except that the red-shirted figure wears blue pants in the former work, and brown pants in the latter. The fog effect in the present work also closely approximates that in Lane~dq~s ship ~dq~starlight~dq~ in the fog, which John Wilmerding has dated circa 1860. The present work was undoubtedly painted during that same late period in the artist~dq~s career. The palpable, light-filled atmosphere of ship in fog, gloucester harbor readily places it among the artist~dq~s most emphatically luminist compositions. The characteristic stillness, a frozen moment in time, is pregnant with introspective solemnity. The two men in their boat in the foreground appear less interested in rowing than in the act of looking, acting as surrogates for the painting~dq~s viewers. They both stare directly through the fog at the nebulous form of the setting sun. Although we know, objectively speaking, that the far shore of Gloucester harbor ought to be visible beyond Ten Pound Island (seen clearly in gloucester harbor at sunset), here it has been absorbed by the fog into which a series of anchored ships appear to dissolve. The effect of the tangible atmosphere is visible even across the single hull of the nearest ship at right. Wilmerding has written insightfully of this late phase in the artist~dq~s career: Whether subconsciously or not, Lane seems to have developed in these last years of his career a preference for scenes of dusk rather than dawn. Where earlier, bear island at sunrise or southwest harbor at midday were metaphorical images respectively of expectation and serene satisfaction, these pictures done in Lane~dq~s old age may be thought of as expressions of culmination and fulfillment (fitz hugh lane, op. cit., p. 75). Viewed in the context of Lane~dq~s late career, the introspective aspect of ship in fog, gloucester harbor imbues the work with biographical as well as stylistic relevance. We are grateful to Mark Mitchell for cataloguing this lot.