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William Morris Hunt studio in Magnolia |
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Fitz Henry Lane, Three Master on the
Gloucester Marine Railway, 1857 (On deposit, City of Gloucester
collection) |
In the first half of the mid-19th century, the number of artists on
Cape Ann increased steadily. Fifty years later, it had become an important
art center. The harbors, beaches, coastal marshlands and rocky terrain of
Cape Ann were well on their way to becoming some of the most familiar
images in American art.
The Museum is most widely known for its unparalleled collection of
paintings by Fitz Henry Lane, the mid-19th century maritime luminist who
was born in Gloucester in 1804. The collection includes 40 oil paintings,
a rare watercolor (his first known work), and more than 100 drawings by
the artist.
Among the important 19th century artists to work on Cape Ann were
William Morris Hunt, who visited off and on between 1877 and his death in
1879, and Winslow Homer, a summer resident in 1873 and 1880. When Homer
first arrived in Gloucester, he had been experimenting with watercolor. He
chose to abandon the studio and work out of doors while he was in
Gloucester. It was then that he began to master the medium, producing very
fine watercolors almost to the exclusion of oil paintings. When he
returned to Cape Ann in 1880, he stayed on Ten Pound Island in the middle
of Gloucester’s busy harbor. A drawing from that summer - a portrait of
William B. Astor’s yacht Ambassadress - is part of the Museum’s permanent
collection.
Also in the Museum’s collection is a rare Homer etching The
Life Line (1884). It shows a dramatic sea rescue in a breeches
buoy, the life saving device often used in the 19th century when
rescue by lifeboat was impossible. Homer first dealt with this
subject in an oil painting with the same title which was shown in
1884 at the National Academy in New York. The painting was an
overwhelming success and has been hailed as his first masterpiece.
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