Dec 08, 2022 - Sale 2624

Sale 2624 - Lot 254

Price Realized: $ 3,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(MAINE.) Fitz Henry Lane. Castine From Hospital Island 1855. Large tinted lithographed panorama of Castine Harbor and the peninsula town. 26 1/2x36 1/2 inches sheet size, wide margins; age toned, various spotting and surface rubbing (mostly marginal); wants professional conservation. Boston: L.H. Bradford & Co. Lithography; for Joseph L. Stevens, [1855]
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Additional Details

"John Wilmerding, the leading authority on Lane, regards this view, Castine from Hospital Island, as this widely acclaimed artist's most accomplished work" (Reps, page 39).

"A lithograph of 1855 executed after sketches that he had made on his summer trips to Maine shows Castine from Hospital Island. The style is at last firm and fully controlled, and years of practice have produced a smooth pictorial scene characteristic of his best work. By this time he has noticeably lowered his horizon. The clouds, charged with mood and tangibility, are no longer a weak curtain drop in the background. The same sky and air uniformly fill all parts of the scene and draw the spectator directly into the view. Like most of the later lithographs, the Castine view is structurally simple, without the subtle complexities of Lane's larger oils of the same period. The treatment of the water in a slightly heavier stroke, delicately highlighted, gives it coherence and substance. Small areas of sails and wooden planks in the foreground, now lighted without exaggeration, direct the eye to the important parts or objects of activity, while never denying or overdramatizing the view as a whole. The scale, too, is completely proportioned and the point of view is even" (John Wilmerding, Fitz Hugh Lane American Marine Painter, 1964, Page 44).

Less than 10 institutional examples located.

Reps 1197 (plate 58); E.V. Thompson, Important Maine Maps, Books, Prints & Ephemera, #427.