Skinner Sets New $5.5 MILLION World Record For Fitz Hugh Lane
In November 2004, Skinner set a new world record price when it sold a rediscovered Fitz Hugh Lane painting for over $5.5 million, besting the previous world record price for the artist by over $1.5 million. The sale of this painting marks the third record price that Skinner has set for a work by Fitz Hugh Lane, who is widely regarded as one of the foremost American painters of the 19th century. It also sets a new record price for the most valuable artwork ever sold at auction in New England, and solidifies Skinner position as a major force in the art world for the sale of American and European paintings at auction.
“Finding a painting by Fitz Hugh Lane is always exciting,” noted Colleene Fesko, vice president for Skinner and director of the firm’s American & European Paintings Department. “Finding a masterpiece so rightly appreciated by a broad and discerning audience is especially gratifying.” Fesko continued, “I don’t know how many paintings at this great quality and condition exist, but I don’t believe there are many more. It was an exciting evening for all of us – the buyer, the seller, and the American paintings market.”
Sold to the trade, the winning bidder faced aggressive competition from both the phones and auction floor. The oil on canvas, entitled Manchester Harbor, estimated at $650,000-850,000 was consigned to Skinner from a west coast family, who had descended from the original owner. The painting was originally acquired by Thomas J. Herring (1825-1895), a Boston slater. In October of 1847, T.J. Herring was married on Nantucket to Winnifred Bunker Folger (1830-1868), a descendent of Peter Folger, the grandfather of Benjamin Franklin. The painting was included in the Thirtieth Exhibition of Paintings and Statuary, at the Athenaeum Gallery in Boston, Mass. in 1857. The work is noted in the exhibition catalogue, page 15, number 329, lent by T.J. Herring. A copy of this catalogue accompanies the lot.
Fitz Hugh Lane was born in 1804 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and spent much of his youth sketching the Cape Ann shore, north of Boston. He apprenticed with William S. Pendleton, the Boston lithography firm, in the early 1830s, specializing in topographic views. In the 1840s Lane probably saw the works of Robert Salmon and Washington Allston in Boston, and it was at this time that he decided to concentrate on painting. The paintings of the late 1840s and early 1850s reflected Lane's earlier graphics training, in conjunction with the influence of the marine artists of the earlier generation. As is apparent in Manchester Harbor, the foreground details with its figures, piers, and spits of land, set the scale for the work while accentuating the vastness of the view and its light. The low placement of the horizon line allows for an expansive sky. Tinted with the warm hues of sunrise and reflected in the calm waters, the light becomes the focus of the work, as is typical of Luminism.
The horizontal arrangement of the composition created a stillness in spite of the great varied activity of the foreground. In conjunction with the concentration of light around a sun viewed through clouds just above the horizon, Manchester Harbor foreshadows the increasing calm and poetry of Lane's mature Luminist style as it would emerge in the late 1850s.
Skinner’s next auction of American & European Paintings & Prints will be held on Friday, March 4th at 4 p.m. in Skinner’s Boston gallery.
