LANE, Fitz Hugh
(b. 1804, Gloucester, Ma., d. 1865, Gloucester, Ma.)

The Island and Fort of Ten Pound, Gloucester

1847
Oil on canvas, 51 x 76 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Lane's panoramic view of his native city is half-way between genre painting and landscape, and introduces us to the Luminist movement, a current within landscape painting which differed from the sentimentalism and grandiloquence of Cole's art and the work of the Hudson River painters. As its name indicates, Luminism was a way of painting landscape in terms of light and atmosphere, coupled with a highly polished and finished technique and a calm and peaceful view of the natural world.