Taking in Sails at Sunset

A rare woman maritime painter of the nineteenth century, Mary Blood Mellen was born in Vermont and raised in central Massachusetts before marrying a Universalist minister, Reverend Charles W. Mellen, in 1840. In 1855, her husband was called to serve in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which likely provided the opportunity for her to meet the artist Fitz Henry Lane. Mellen worked closely as a student and collaborator of Lane, and recent scholarship has revealed that Mellen not only created paintings from some of Lane's drawing studies, but she also likely painted, either in part or whole, several works formerly attributed solely to Lane. Mellen's distinctive stylistic variations include more defined waves and more yellow and pink within her sunsets. James A. Craig suggests that the intricately depicted sails in Taking in Sails at Sunset possibly reflect contributions by Lane within the present work by Mellen. (Fitz H. Lane: An Artist's Voyage through Nineteenth Century America, Charleston, South Carolina, 2006, p. 196n420)