Fitz Henry Lane Biography | Oil Paintings

Fitz Henry Lane name was Nathaniel Rogers Lane and at twenty-seven, for unknown reasons he legally changed it to Fitz Henry Lane also known as Fitz Hugh Lane.

Since he was born, Fitz Henry Lane was exposed to the sea and maritime life, a factor that had an incredible effect on his later decision of on what subjects to paint. Lane had a walking disability since he was two years old, and needed crutches or a cane to move around. Had he not had this impairment, he might have pursued a nautical profession, or a sailmaker like his father, instead of an artist., we will never know.

Lane was self-taught in the art by working at Pendleton's Lithography shop in Boston, specializing in topographical views, which he started when he was twenty-eight in 1832 and stayed until 1847. It was common for aspiring American artists, with no money for formal instruction in the arts by traveling to Europe or by going to one of the esteemed American art academies, to work and be schooled in an art-related job. At the time Lane was working at Pendleton's, so was the artist the English marine artist Robert Salmon, who had a large stylistic impact on Lane's early art, and it was now that Fitz Henry Lane decided to concentrate on painting.

Fitz Henry Lane's first-known work done in 1830, was a watercolor titled The Burning of the Packet Ship Boston, a real event of a ship hit by lightning in Boston harbor.

In the early 1840s, Fitz Henry Lane announces himself to be a marine painter while continuing his career as a lithographer for a few more years. He attained eager and enthusiastic patronage from several of the leading merchants and sea captains in Boston, New York, and his native Gloucester.

As one of the styles of landscape painting to rise in the nineteenth century, Luminism embraced the contemporary preoccupation with nature as a manifestation of God's grand plan. It was Luminism more than any other of the schools that succeeded in instilling a realistic study of nature with a depth of feeling.

A contemporary of the Hudson River School, Fitz Henry Lane enjoyed a reputation as America's premier painter of marine subjects during his lifetime and his highest auction price for an oil painting is Manchester Harbor sold for  US$5.5 million dollars.

Art Movement: Luminism.
Artists Influencing Fitz Hugh Lane: Robert Salmon.
Painters Fitz Henry Lane Influenced: Mary Mellen, Benjamin Champney, William Bradford.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.