Coming Ashore near Brace's Rock, Gloucester, Massachusetts

Fitz Henry Lane was born in 1804 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where his father worked as a sail maker. For nearly his entire career, Lane painted the coast of his native New England with his earliest works depicting Gloucester Harbor and its ships. In 1832 he settled in Boston, where he later established a reputation as the foremost professional marine painter in America. In 1848, Lane returned permanently to Gloucester, and soon embarked on a series of luminous marine paintings that still rank today as some of the most important contributions to American painting in the nineteenth century.

The present work belongs to Lane's late series of tranquil seascapes of Gloucester, Massachusetts, which also includes Brace's Rock, Brace's Cove (1864, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois). According to the online catalogue raisonné of the artist's work: "The treatment of the rocks, particularly those covered in seaweed in the water, have a softer and less distinct quality that could indicate Mary Mellen's hand. While this work is signed by Lane, it joins a number of other signed Lane works that show enough of Mellen's stylistic characteristics to suggest a collaboration." (S. Holdsworth, "Brace's Rock Series," fitzhenrylaneonline.org)