Oil on canvas
Terra Foundation for the Arts, Daniel J Terra Collection
> Artist's biography
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In 1863 Lane made a pencil sketch of Brace's Rock, an inaccessible headland near
Gloucester, Massachusetts.
That study provided the basis for a final series of works whose hallucinatory intensity transforms their simple content.
Horizontal elements are disrupted only by the bare mast of the wrecked boat.
The scene is one of affecting tranquillity, yet also of absolute desolation.
The deserted ship on the shore is a timeless symbol of human frailty and the transience of life, an emblem suited
both to an America convulsed by Civil War and to Lane's worsening health. He died the next year. |
Room 6: Transcendental Vision
Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865)