Research: Luce Center for American Art

Accession #	47.114
Artist	Fitz Henry Lane
Title	Off Mount Desert Island
Date	1856
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	24 x 36 1/8 in. (61 x 91.8 cm)
Signed	Signed lower left: "F H Lane 1856"
Credit Line	Museum Collection Fund
Location	American Identities: Colony to Nation / Inventing American Landscape

Curatorial Remarks: Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine, first became a subject for American painters who recorded its rocky shoreline in the 1830s. For Fitz Henry Lane, the Maine coast provided a natural extension of his repertoire of New England marine imagery. In its more secluded shoreline and harbors, he found inspiration for the formal austerity and quietist mood of his late style. Lane’s reductive power is demonstrated in this spare composition, in which much of the picture plane is given over to the magical effect of a twilight sky and the shadowy form of a ship reflected in the still water.