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Photo: Boston Imaging Digital Solutions; © Cape Ann Museum

inv. 121

Tree Study

c.1864

Graphite on paper

11 1/4 x 9 1/4 in. (28.6 x 23.5 cm)

Inscribed lower center: F. H. Lane del.; Inscribed lower right (in pencil): S.H.M. [Samuel H. Mansfield]

Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass., Gift of Samuel H. Mansfield, 1927 (485.90)

Commentary

Lane's drawings typically recorded a particular landscape that he was planning to use in a later painting. In those landscape drawings and in the underdrawing of his paintings he paid particular attention to recording delicate details of rocks and trees. This study shows this attention to the form of a tree, but is rare among the extant drawings.

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Types of Objects:
- Study »

Provenance (Information known to date; research ongoing.)

the Artist, Gloucester, Mass.

Joseph L. Stevens, Jr., Gloucester, Mass.

Samuel H. Mansfield, Gloucester, Mass.

Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Mass., 1927

Marks & Labels

Marks: Inscribed upper left (in red ink): 90 [numbering system used by curator A. M. Brooks upon Samuel H. Mansfield's donation of the drawings to the Cape Ann Museum]

Exhibition History

1993–94 Cape Ann Museum

Cape Ann Historical Association, Gloucester, Massachusetts, Training the Eye and Hand: Fitz Hugh Lane and Nineteenth Century American Drawing Books, September 17, 1993–January 29, 1994. (Exhibition catalogue: Cape Ann 1993).

Published References

Cape Ann 1974

Paintings and Drawings by Fitz Hugh Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1974, fig. 39, as Tree Study.

Cape Ann 1993

Training the Eye and the Hand: Fitz Hugh Lane and 19th Century Drawing Books. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 1993. Exhibition catalogue (1993–94 Cape Ann Museum), p. 39, fig. 34, as Tree Study.

Wilmerding 2005

Wilmerding, John. Fitz Henry Lane. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Historical Association, 2005, ill. 58.

Record last updated May 6, 2025. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.

Citation: "Tree Study, c.1864 (inv. 121)." In Fitz Henry Lane Online. Gloucester, MA: Cape Ann Museum. www.fitzhenrylaneonline.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=121 (accessed on August 24, 2025).