Schoelkopf Gallery company logo
Schoelkopf Gallery
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Our Services
  • Artists
  • Artworks
  • Exhibitions
  • Online Viewing Rooms
  • Art Fairs
  • Contact
  • News
  • Publications
Menu
  • Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Fitz Henry Lane, Christmas Cove, c. 1863

    Fitz Henry Lane

    Christmas Cove, c. 1863
    Oil on canvas
    15½ x 24 inches
    39.4 x 61 cm
    Sold
    A leading figure of the Luminist movement, an extension of the Hudson River School, Fitz Henry Lane was devoted to capturing light and atmospheric effects in marine painting. Little is...
    Read more

    A leading figure of the Luminist movement, an extension of the Hudson River School, Fitz Henry Lane was devoted to capturing light and atmospheric effects in marine painting. Little is known of Lane's biography; he was largely self-taught and also studied with English-born marine painter Robert Salmon, who is credited with founding the Luminist movement. Lane enjoyed local celebrity in Boston during his lifetime, and his death was regarded as a national loss. Nineteenth-century American art scholar Barbara Novak described his work as "perhaps the closest parallel to Emerson's Transcendentalism that America produced: of all painters of the mid-century, he was the most 'transparent eyeball,'" referring to his intuitive ability to experience nature. [1] Celebrating the rugged beauty of the Maine coast, Christmas Cove hints at deeper meaning in the image of a schooner at rest, the end of day as metaphor for the end of life. Despite the restful elements within the composition, Lane imbued his composition with a sense of vitality and light.


    In Christmas Cove, Lane employed the low horizon line he favored, filling most of the canvas with sky. The setting sunbathes the entire composition with a pink glow. Visual harmony is reinforced by a dark-to-light balance and repetition of form—three rocky formations lead the eye toward the spare silhouette of a boat at the distant center. Further balance is established by the verticality of three barren pines opposite two tall masts. Art Historian John Wilmerding observed parallels between the national trauma during the post-Civil War era and Lane's seascape imagery, noting that "their elegiac twilight reds and stark tonal contrasts coincide with the literal storm clouds and civil fires of a nation at war with itself.” [2]


    Wilmerding identified Christmas Cove among several of "the most important and beautiful" Maine views based on earlier drawings and repeated visits to favorite sites of the late 1850s and 1860s, noting that these works tend to be more generalized and drawn from memory [3]. Notably, despite the painting's longstanding title, the locale is not Christmas Cove, which does not possess the island geography depicted and is unlikely the original artist's title. Instead, the painting captures another venue, or a pastiche of views, in Penobscot Bay, an area intimately familiar to the artist and home to an array of islands that Lane visited and sketched in the 1850s and early 1860s [4]. Lane traveled to Maine as early as the summer of 1848 and made numerous excursions Down East. Lane's commitment to Maine and the atmospheric effects of the sea directly link him to future generations of Maine painters, such as Winslow Homer. The present work is characteristic of Lane's most celebrated Maine subjects, done at the culmination of his successful career.


    [1] Barbara Novak, American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism and the American Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 89

    [2] John Wilmerding, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. New York: Abrams, 1988, p. 122

    [3] Sam Holdsworth, "The Catalog of Paintings, Drawings, and Lithographs." Fitz Henry Lane Online. Cape Ann Museum.

    [4] John Wilmerding, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane. New York: Abrams, 1988, p. 122

    Close full details

    Provenance

    The artist; 
    Ms. Johnson (?), Rhode Island;
    [Childs Gallery, Boston, 1973];
    Walter B. and Marcia F. Goldfarb, Portland Maine, 1974; to
    The Estate of Walter B. Goldfarb, 2021

    Exhibitions

    The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Natural Paradise: Painting in America 1800-1950, October 1-November 30, 1976
    National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850-1875, February 10-June 15, 1980
    National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, May 15-December 31, 1988, no. 53
    Portland Museum of Art, Maine, A Magnificent Stillness: American Art from a Private Collection, June 26-November 8, 2015, n.p., illus. pl. 6
    Portland Museum of Art, Maine, 2021-2022 (on long-term loan)

    Literature

    John Wilmerding, Fitz Hugh Lane, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971, p. 81, illus. fig. 87
    Kynaston McShine, The Natural Paradise: Painting in America 1800-1950, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1976, illus. p. 78
    John Wilmerding, American Light: The Luminist Movement: 1850-1875, Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1980, pp. 43, 111, illus.
    John Wilmerding, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, New York: Abrams, 1988, pp. 14, 122, no. 53, illus. p. 121
    Franklin Kelly, “The Paintings of Fitz Hugh Lane,” The Magazine Antiques 134, July 1988, pp. 122, 125
    John Wilmerding, The Artist’s Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 64
    John Conron, American Picturesque, College Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, illus. fig. 19
    John Wilmerding, Fitz Henry Lane, Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 2005. Reprint of Fitz Hugh Lane, by John Wilmerding. New York: Praeger, 1971, p. 81, illus. 87 (includes new information regarding the artist's name)
    H. Travers Newton, Jr., Fitz Henry Lane's Series Paintings of Brace's Rock: Meaning and Technique, Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2010, terramuseumart.org, p. 35
    Andrew Wilson, "Magnificent Stillness, but Moving Emotions," Fine Art Today, July 15, 2015, fineartconnoisseur.com/2015/07/magnificent-stillness-but-moving-emotions/, illus.
    Karen A. Sherry, A Magnificent Stillness: American Art from a Private Collection, Portland, Maine: Portland Museum of Art, 2015, p. 5, illus. pl. 6
    "Christmas Cove, c. 1863 (inv. 402)," Fitz Henry Lane Online, Cape Ann Museum, fitzhenrylaneonline.org/catalog/entry.php?id=402
    Share
    • Facebook
    • X
    • Pinterest
    • Tumblr
    • Email

           

The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. We are located at 390 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10013.

Instagram, opens in a new tab.
LinkedIn, opens in a new tab.
Artsy, opens in a new tab.
Artnet, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
Send an email
View on Google Maps
Accessibility Policy
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2025 Schoelkopf Gallery
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences
Close

Subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates from the gallery

Interests *

Signup

* denotes required fields

We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy (available on request). You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.