CLIPPER SHIP – NORTHERN LIGHT OF BOSTON – Fitz Henry Lane

Description

In 1839, Colonel William P. Winchester commissioned Louis Winde to design “Northern Light,” a schooner yacht of seventy register tons, which was built at East Boston by Whitmore Holbrook. At first used for cruising, she was given longer spars and a larger sail plan in 1843, and started racing in earnest. In 1844, she sailed to Newport, Rhode Island, to participate in a regatta sponsored by the New York Yacht Club. Two years later, she sailed in that club’s second regatta at New York. At the end of 1846, she was sold for use as a packet, making scheduled sailings between Boston and Plymouth, Massachusetts. Winchester repurchased her in 1848, then sold her a year later, the new owners planning to sail her to California. En route, in 1850, she was wrecked in the Strait of Magellan with all hands rescued.

To judge from the composition, Lane has made little, if any, changes to the drawing by Robert Salmon that (according to the inscription on the reverse of the painting) was a source for the painting. Salmon’s harbor scenes were usually crowded with vessels of many types and sizes, and one or both ends of the foreground often contained vessels and wharves (or parts thereof) that framed activity in the painting’s center. Both Lane and William Bradford made use of this device, but only seldom, if surviving examples are any indication. The application of this effect by Lane can be seen in his vessel portrait “Starlight” in Harbor, c.1855 (inv. 249).

Another effect in this painting that Lane borrowed was to illuminate the sails of vessels in the foreground, leaving those in the background much darker to provide contrast and emphasize foreground subjects and activity. Lane’s paintings seldom used or needed this device to the extent that Salmon used it, as his harbor views were less congested with vessel traffic. In his Boston and New York harbor scenes, Boston Harbor, Sunset, 1850–55 (inv. 242) and New York Harbor, 1852 (inv. 345) are examples of his way of employing contrast in ships’ sails.

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