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LANE, Fitz Hugh - b. 1804 Gloucester, Ma., d. 1865 Gloucester, Ma. - WGA

LANE, Fitz Hugh

(b. 1804 Gloucester, Ma., d. 1865 Gloucester, Ma.)

American painter and printmaker. A painter of ships and coastal panoramas, Lane is most notable as a leading figure in American luminism. He illuminated his canvases with warm, glowing yellow and pink skies reflected in water. The resulting paintings project a shimmering density that expresses a profound serenity that is akin to transcendentalism. Owl’s Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine (1862; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is a characteristic work.

Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine
Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine by

Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine

This idyllic harbor view is Lane’s best-known work.

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The Island and Fort of Ten Pound, Gloucester
The Island and Fort of Ten Pound, Gloucester by

The Island and Fort of Ten Pound, Gloucester

Lane’s panoramic view of his native city is half-way between genre painting and landscape, and introduces us to the Luminist movement, a current within landscape painting which differed from the sentimentalism and grandiloquence of Cole’s art and the work of the Hudson River painters. As its name indicates, Luminism was a way of painting landscape in terms of light and atmosphere, coupled with a highly polished and finished technique and a calm and peaceful view of the natural world.

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