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What might seem like idle doodling, when rotated 90 degrees clockwise, becomes recognizable as the cross section of a Greek Revival style picture frame molding. Actually, it depicts two moldings in one, with one variant superimposed on the other (See comparative sketches).
Separating the two styles, it appears that Variant A was the original design – very typical for the mid-19th century, and the most common style used for Lane’s larger paintings. Overdrawn in a heavier hand is Variant B, which has a larger flare which eliminated the outside elements while retaining the inside moldings with their ornamentation.
Did Lane show this drawing to a frame maker (William Y. Balch?) who then suggested the bolder Variant B? No example of this variant could be found on any of Lane’s paintings at Cape Ann Museum.
Barely visible over the rest of the sheet is a tracery of pencil lines resembling a crude map of a river with numerous islands and tributaries—perhaps even a tidal river system like the Annisquam, Essex, or Ipswich rivers north of Cape Ann. Penobscot Bay tributaries were also studied, using early U.S. Coast Survey charts, but no positive likenesses could be established. It is even arguable that Lane was not the draftsman, but the drawing was the effort of someone untrained in map reading/drawing to guide Lane to a promising location to depict.
– Erik Ronnberg
Historical Materials
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William Y. Balch was a framer and art dealer in Boston who sold some of Lane's paintings. He sold one to a "Gentleman from Maine" who bought a picture for $485.38. Balch's store was on Tremont Row, located between the Tremont Temple and Gleason's Publishing Hall.
Samuel Sawyer Papers
Cape Ann Museum Library & Archives
Archive Collection exp016
"November 8. Lane. Homestead
Frame at Balch
Museum &c. &c."
Also filed under: Diaries / Ledgers / Etc. » // Sawyer, Samuel »
1903 Four-page letter Collection of the Cape Ann Museum Library & Archive, Gloucester, Mass.
"[The painting] is offered you for $150 on as long time and in as many notes at 3% interest as you choose. . . I believe this to be the only important painting of Gloucester Harbor that Lane never duplicated. . . .Returning from a Gloucester visit while I was still under the roof there, father brought a print of Lane's first Gloucester view, bought of the artist at his Tremont Temple studio in Boston. An extra dollar had been paid for coloring it. For a few years it was a home delight.. . .I had been a few years in Gloucester when Lane began to come, for part of the time a while, if I remember rightly. He painted in his brother's house, "up in town" it then was. I recall visits there to see his pictures. But it was long after, that I could claim more than a simple speaking acquaintance. The Stacys were very kind, aiding him as time went on in selling paintings by lot. I invested in a view of Gloucester from Rocky Neck, thus put on sale at the old reading room, irreverently called "Wisdom Hall." And they bought direct of him to some extent, before other residents. Lane was much my senior and yet we gradually drifted together. Our earliest approach to friendship was after his abode began in Elm Street as an occupant of the old Prentiss [sic-corrected Stacy] house, moved there from Pleasant. I was a frequenter of this studio to a considerable extent, yet little compared with my intimacy at the next and last in the new stone house on the hill. Lane's art books and magazines were always at my service and a great inspiration and delight—notably the London Art Journal to which he long subscribed. I have here a little story to tell you. A Castine man came to Gloucester on business that brought the passing of $60 through my hands at 2 1/2 % commission. I bought with the $1.50 thus earned Ruskin's Modern Painters, my first purchase of an artbook. I dare say no other copy was then owned in town. . . .Lane was frequently in Boston, his sales agent being Balch who was at the head of his guild in those days. So in my Boston visits – I was led to Balch's fairly often – the resort of many artists and the depot of their works. Thus through, Lane in various ways I was long in touch with the art world, not only of New England but of New York and Philadelphia. I knew of most picture exhibits and saw many. The coming of the Dusseldorf Gallery to Boston was an event to fix itself in one's memory for all time. What talks of all these things Lane and I had in his studio and by my fireside!
For a long series of years I knew nearly every painting he made. I was with him on several trips to the Maine coast where he did much sketching, and sometimes was was [sic] his chooser of spots and bearer of materials when he sketched in the home neighborhood. Thus there are many paintings whose growth I saw both from brush and pencil. For his physical infirmity prevented his becoming an out-door colorist."
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