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Lot Essay
By the time Fitz Hugh Lane painted Sunrise on the Maine Coast--Mount Desert Island in 1856, the coast of Maine was both a familiar and favorite subject matter for the artist, as he had traveled to the Mount Desert area on numerous occasions since the late 1840s. During the summer of 1850 Lane produced his first luminist composition of Mount Desert Island, recording the scenery around Somes Sound with a calm, tranquil aspect that would become the hallmark of his painting style. Over the course of the next several years, Lane explored the area around Mount Desert, often anchoring his boat in quiet, pristine coves to sketch in his drawing book and to record the brilliant effects of light and atmosphere that typify the coast. As a result, the works from the early to mid 1850s such as Sunrise on the Maine Coast--Mount Desert Island are filled with a sense of transcendence. J. Wilmerding writes, "His first Maine twilights were ones, we feel, of awe and reverence, thanksgiving for day's fulfillment and the certainty to time's perpetual renewal." (The Artist's Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast, Princeton, New Jersey, 1994, p. 67)
Sunrise on the Maine Coast--Mount Desert Island was executed when Lane had developed his full luminist style. The artist has ordered the composition with clear divisions of space reaching back to the horizon and beyond. Rocks and shrubs create the foreground, where the artist himself sits with his sketch pad, contemplating the surrounding landscape and the wondrously calm atmospheric effects above. An expanse of calm water spreads into a cove at left and then leads into open ocean at right. Variously graduated forms--rocky peninsulas and forest-covered mountains--extend the space into the distance, where Lane's signature luminist sky begins. The overall composition evokes a feeling of calm and transcendence, and suggests an equilibrium between landscape and ocean, as well as atmosphere and light.
John Wilmerding has written, "A few other sketches and paintings of the area probably date from the mid-fifties; the two most important Maine canvases of this period are Sunrise on the Maine Coast--Mount Desert Island [the present lot] and Off Mount Desert Island, both from 1856. Because of Lane's intimate familiarity with the southern side of the island, both these works almost certainly show Mount Desert in the soft pink rays of sunrise, though no preparatory studies are known, nor can the exact geographic location be determined. Prominent in the foreground of the former is Lane himself, seated on the shore with his sketchbook, communing with the illuminated hillside beyond, his boat anchored nearby. The other, with a small rocky beach at low tide, slightly varies the composition, but equally emphasizes the spiritual and cerebral experience of a purified landscape." (The Artist's Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast, p. 64)
Sunrise on the Maine Coast--Mount Desert Island was executed when Lane had developed his full luminist style. The artist has ordered the composition with clear divisions of space reaching back to the horizon and beyond. Rocks and shrubs create the foreground, where the artist himself sits with his sketch pad, contemplating the surrounding landscape and the wondrously calm atmospheric effects above. An expanse of calm water spreads into a cove at left and then leads into open ocean at right. Variously graduated forms--rocky peninsulas and forest-covered mountains--extend the space into the distance, where Lane's signature luminist sky begins. The overall composition evokes a feeling of calm and transcendence, and suggests an equilibrium between landscape and ocean, as well as atmosphere and light.
John Wilmerding has written, "A few other sketches and paintings of the area probably date from the mid-fifties; the two most important Maine canvases of this period are Sunrise on the Maine Coast--Mount Desert Island [the present lot] and Off Mount Desert Island, both from 1856. Because of Lane's intimate familiarity with the southern side of the island, both these works almost certainly show Mount Desert in the soft pink rays of sunrise, though no preparatory studies are known, nor can the exact geographic location be determined. Prominent in the foreground of the former is Lane himself, seated on the shore with his sketchbook, communing with the illuminated hillside beyond, his boat anchored nearby. The other, with a small rocky beach at low tide, slightly varies the composition, but equally emphasizes the spiritual and cerebral experience of a purified landscape." (The Artist's Mount Desert: American Painters on the Maine Coast, p. 64)