Lot Essay
In the 1850s Fitz Hugh Lane painted a series of seascapes that have proven to be among his most enduring images. Among them is his masterwork, The Golden Rule, celebrating the great age of sail at the mid-point of the nineteenth century. Painting here in his signature, luminist style, Lane depicts a sunset on the coast of New England. On the open water, he presents a varied group of sailing ships, their sails capturing the rose-colored light that brightens the horizon. As in many of Lane's best works, the air is nearly still, and the sails hang loosely in a scene of contemplative quiet. At the center of the composition is the clipper ship, the Golden Rule, which provides the central compositional focus of the work, as well as its title.
As Carter Brown writes, "Lane's best works, with their calm order, serene light, and almost magical balance of elements, achieve a quiet, elegiac effect that can only be described as movingly poetic. Surely few other American artists have ever said quite so much, using quite so little. Lane could still a moment of time with such flawless certainty as seemingly to fix it for all eternity." (in J.Wilmerding, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 6)
Lane was born in 1804 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where his father worked as a sailmaker. For nearly his entire career, Lane painted the coast of his native New England, his earliest works depicting Gloucester harbor and its ships. In 1832 he settled in Boston, where he later established his reputation as the foremost professional artist devoted to marine painting in America. In 1848, Lane returned permanently to Gloucester, and soon embarked on a series of luminist marine paintings that still rank today as some of the most important contributions to American painting in the nineteenth century.
The height of the clipper ship era in the 1850s was a highly prosperous period for New England shipping, and a substantial amount of documentary information is available on the clipper ship the Golden Rule, and its history. She was built in 1854 by Hitchcock and Company of Damariscotta, Maine, and registered on January 1, 1855, in Nobleboro, Maine, under the ownership of W. Hitchcock and others. The ship measured 1185 tons, 185 feet in length, 37 in width at the beam, and 23 feet deep. Ownership transferred to Frederick Nickerson of Boston on August 21, 1857, when the Golden Rule was re-registered in that city. In the present work, the red-and-white swallowtail house flag of F. Nickerson and Co., of Boston, hangs from the main mast, indicating that Lane painted this work sometime after 1857. Her captain at the time was Thomas Mayo. The flag on the foremast is a United States Union Jack, which was flown when entering an American port, and suggests that the moment depicted by Lane is the arrival of the Golden Rule from a distant crossing. Her travels were extensive over the years. In the 1850s she sailed to ports as far flung as Calcutta, India, Valparaiso, Chile, and Shanghai, China. She had a long career of nearly fifty years, later being sold to Canadian owners, with her last survey done in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1891. The ship remained in American ship registers until 1900.
In the present work, Lane has added in the distance two schooners under sail--depicting one fully laden with a load of timber, a common cargo, particularly for ships originating in Maine. Nearer to the Golden Rule and behind its bowsprit, a hermaphrodite brig sails down wind; such brigs were common "coasters" that regularly worked the ports of New England. In the foreground, Lane includes a smaller, two-masted craft generally known as a New England boat, which rides at anchor. The two sailors aboard have lowered its sails, and over the port side one of the men has dropped a hand line to fish in the water. The New England boat was widely used at the time for commercial fishing and harbor traffic, and appears in numerous oils by the artist. One is featured, for example, in the artist's Fishing Party, 1850, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, p. 92)
In The Golden Rule, Lane paints a picture of utter tranquility, characterized by what he includes, sailing ships drifting in light air, and by what he leaves out, most notably the steamships that figure in many of his other compositions of the 1850s. Here the scene is purely of the age of sail, and a composition that includes a wide diversity of craft, a common sight in the nineteenth century. As Erik A. R. Ronnberg, Jr., has pointed out, on the New England coast "the swiftest and most refined examples of marine technology glided past traditional watercraft types that looked and worked very much the same throughout the nineteenth century." To a knowledgeable, nineteenth-century observer, Lane's inclusion in a single composition of a boat, a brig, two schooners and a clipper ship could serve as an essay in sailing ships of the period. In addition, it emphasizes the sheer modernity of the clipper ship, 'the ultimate symbol of oceanic travel and the object of intense scrutiny by ship designers and overstatement by the press.' (The Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, pp. 61, 73)
Other clipper ships appear in numerous works by Lane in the 1850s. Compositionally, The Golden Rule echoes, for example, Lane's earlier work, Salem Harbor of 1853 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), in which the artist also places a clipper ship as a focal point in the right middle distance. In both, Lane adds other ships of varied design, chiefly, it appears, to underscore the imposing presence and modernity of the clipper ships. However, Lane's dramatic use of sunset light in The Golden Rule shifts the emphasis subtly away from the cloud-filled sky and the busy harbor of the Salem picture, to a richer, more purely luminist image.
In The Golden Rule the entire sky captures the pink light of the sunset. Also, Lane has transformed the clipper into a more prominent element, enabling the artist to make use of the enlarged pattern of sails to dramatically present the play of light and shadow on the canvas aloft. As if to further emphasize the tranquility of the scene, Lane leaves the landscape details at the barest minimum. A thin rise of land near the left edge of the horizon simply serves to place the scene on a coast. Rather than establish an exact location, Lane creates with The Golden Rule a more transcendental image in keeping with his other works of the 1850s, when his true subject becomes less specific to a place, and more evocative of mood, of light, and of silence.
We are grateful to Mr. Paul O'Pecko, Library Director of Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, for his assistance in providing documentary information on the Golden Rule and the other vessels in this painting.
As Carter Brown writes, "Lane's best works, with their calm order, serene light, and almost magical balance of elements, achieve a quiet, elegiac effect that can only be described as movingly poetic. Surely few other American artists have ever said quite so much, using quite so little. Lane could still a moment of time with such flawless certainty as seemingly to fix it for all eternity." (in J.Wilmerding, Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 6)
Lane was born in 1804 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where his father worked as a sailmaker. For nearly his entire career, Lane painted the coast of his native New England, his earliest works depicting Gloucester harbor and its ships. In 1832 he settled in Boston, where he later established his reputation as the foremost professional artist devoted to marine painting in America. In 1848, Lane returned permanently to Gloucester, and soon embarked on a series of luminist marine paintings that still rank today as some of the most important contributions to American painting in the nineteenth century.
The height of the clipper ship era in the 1850s was a highly prosperous period for New England shipping, and a substantial amount of documentary information is available on the clipper ship the Golden Rule, and its history. She was built in 1854 by Hitchcock and Company of Damariscotta, Maine, and registered on January 1, 1855, in Nobleboro, Maine, under the ownership of W. Hitchcock and others. The ship measured 1185 tons, 185 feet in length, 37 in width at the beam, and 23 feet deep. Ownership transferred to Frederick Nickerson of Boston on August 21, 1857, when the Golden Rule was re-registered in that city. In the present work, the red-and-white swallowtail house flag of F. Nickerson and Co., of Boston, hangs from the main mast, indicating that Lane painted this work sometime after 1857. Her captain at the time was Thomas Mayo. The flag on the foremast is a United States Union Jack, which was flown when entering an American port, and suggests that the moment depicted by Lane is the arrival of the Golden Rule from a distant crossing. Her travels were extensive over the years. In the 1850s she sailed to ports as far flung as Calcutta, India, Valparaiso, Chile, and Shanghai, China. She had a long career of nearly fifty years, later being sold to Canadian owners, with her last survey done in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1891. The ship remained in American ship registers until 1900.
In the present work, Lane has added in the distance two schooners under sail--depicting one fully laden with a load of timber, a common cargo, particularly for ships originating in Maine. Nearer to the Golden Rule and behind its bowsprit, a hermaphrodite brig sails down wind; such brigs were common "coasters" that regularly worked the ports of New England. In the foreground, Lane includes a smaller, two-masted craft generally known as a New England boat, which rides at anchor. The two sailors aboard have lowered its sails, and over the port side one of the men has dropped a hand line to fish in the water. The New England boat was widely used at the time for commercial fishing and harbor traffic, and appears in numerous oils by the artist. One is featured, for example, in the artist's Fishing Party, 1850, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. (Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, p. 92)
In The Golden Rule, Lane paints a picture of utter tranquility, characterized by what he includes, sailing ships drifting in light air, and by what he leaves out, most notably the steamships that figure in many of his other compositions of the 1850s. Here the scene is purely of the age of sail, and a composition that includes a wide diversity of craft, a common sight in the nineteenth century. As Erik A. R. Ronnberg, Jr., has pointed out, on the New England coast "the swiftest and most refined examples of marine technology glided past traditional watercraft types that looked and worked very much the same throughout the nineteenth century." To a knowledgeable, nineteenth-century observer, Lane's inclusion in a single composition of a boat, a brig, two schooners and a clipper ship could serve as an essay in sailing ships of the period. In addition, it emphasizes the sheer modernity of the clipper ship, 'the ultimate symbol of oceanic travel and the object of intense scrutiny by ship designers and overstatement by the press.' (The Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, pp. 61, 73)
Other clipper ships appear in numerous works by Lane in the 1850s. Compositionally, The Golden Rule echoes, for example, Lane's earlier work, Salem Harbor of 1853 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), in which the artist also places a clipper ship as a focal point in the right middle distance. In both, Lane adds other ships of varied design, chiefly, it appears, to underscore the imposing presence and modernity of the clipper ships. However, Lane's dramatic use of sunset light in The Golden Rule shifts the emphasis subtly away from the cloud-filled sky and the busy harbor of the Salem picture, to a richer, more purely luminist image.
In The Golden Rule the entire sky captures the pink light of the sunset. Also, Lane has transformed the clipper into a more prominent element, enabling the artist to make use of the enlarged pattern of sails to dramatically present the play of light and shadow on the canvas aloft. As if to further emphasize the tranquility of the scene, Lane leaves the landscape details at the barest minimum. A thin rise of land near the left edge of the horizon simply serves to place the scene on a coast. Rather than establish an exact location, Lane creates with The Golden Rule a more transcendental image in keeping with his other works of the 1850s, when his true subject becomes less specific to a place, and more evocative of mood, of light, and of silence.
We are grateful to Mr. Paul O'Pecko, Library Director of Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, for his assistance in providing documentary information on the Golden Rule and the other vessels in this painting.