Harbor of Boston, with the City in the Distance
Fitz Henry Lane (American, 1804–1865)
c. 1846–47
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 66 x 104.8 x 14 cm (26 x 41 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.); Unframed: 43.2 x 68.6 cm (17 x 27 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund and partial gift of Travers Newton, Joanna Newton Riccardi and Georgia Newton Pulos
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In this late afternoon view of Boston Harbor, Lane masterfully evoked the diffuse quality of sunlight reflecting off water. The artist was a son of a shipbuilder, so perhaps it is not surprising that his renderings of ships and their intricate riggings are painstakingly accurate. On the far left side of the painting, evolving technology appears in the guise of a steamboat, which ferried passengers between Boston and Gloucester.
