LANE, Fitz Henry (1804-1865), after Albert CONANT
View of New Bedford. From the Fort near Fairhaven
Boston: Published by A. Conant, Lane & Scott's Lith. Tremont Temple, 1845. Lithograph coloured by hand. Sheet size: (19 3/16 x 26 3/8 inches).
A stunning view of the harbor of New Bedford, Massachusetts by Fitz Henry Lane, one of America's most celebrated marine painters.
A large, finely coloured harbour view of New Bedford at the height of its whaling prosperity, drawn from Albert Conant's on-the-spot sketch and translated on stone by Fitz Henry Lane. The vantage is the fort at Fairhaven on the east bank of the Acushnet River, looking west across a foreground of fenced pasture and shore activity to the crowded waterfront and steeple-studded skyline of New Bedford. Lane populates the water with a carefully staged ensemble of craft that animates the port and guides the eye: whaling ships fitting out or newly arrived at the wharves; coastal sloops and schooners in the roads; a skiff pulling toward a vessel at anchor; and, at centre, the side-wheel steamboat Massachusetts (built 1842 for the Nantucket Steamboat Company), its plume of smoke marking the steamer link that tied island and mainland to the whaling capital. The combination of broad sky, reflective water and precise rigging are characteristic of Lane's best lithographic town views. Although based on Conant's drawing, the print bears Lane's imprint as a marine specialist. Lane augmented the scene with additional whaling vessels and arranged the traffic of the harbour with a painter's sense of rhythm and light. Lane's earliest documented visit to New Bedford is later (1856), so his ship details here likely reflect close study of comparable vessels in other Massachusetts ports and knowledge of printed sources. The result is a convincing and visually coherent record of the city that, in the 1840s, had overtaken Nantucket as the nation's pre-eminent whaling port. Fitz Henry Lane is considered one of America's greatest landscape and marine artists. His elegant panoramas of coastal towns are nothing short of magnificent, and his accomplished lithographs set a precedent for large town views that shaped the history of American printmaking. His superb views chart the early landscape of New England's ports with a clarity and beauty seldom seen. As Carter Brown asserts, "No other American painter of the nineteenth century matched him in capturing the character of maritime New England, in portraying the reflective sheen of calm water or the agitated surface of wind-blown waves, the clarity of light-filled still air or the moist atmosphere of cloudy humid days." The son of a Gloucester sail maker, Lane trained as a lithographer in Boston with William S. Pendleton before forming Lane & Scott (1844-1848) with fellow Pendleton alumnus John W. A. Scott. Conant, an active view-maker and publisher, supplied drawings for a number of New England subjects in these years; related collaborations include View of Newburyport (1845) and A View of Newton Corner (c. 1845). As a union of Conant's topographical acuity and Lane's marine expertise, View of New Bedford stands among the most desirable mid-century New England port views.
Wilmerding, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane 6; Wilmerding, Fitz Hugh Lane 28-29; The Whaling Museum, American Maritime Prints 79; Pierce, Sally and Catharina Slautterback, Boston Lithography, 1825-1880, p.141, 177; Ronnberg, Erik, "Catalogue entry: View of New Bedford...", Fitz Henry Lane Online; Dow, George Francis, "Whale Ships and Whaling", Marine Research Society (1925), p.183; "New Bedford and Old Darthmouth: A Portrait of a Region's Past", Old Darthmouth Historical Society (1975), p.124.
Item #42419
Price: $3,000.00