Fitz Henry Lane

Fitz Henry Lane – formally known as Fitz Hugh Lane – was born on December 19, 1804 in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  He was paralyzed at a young age.  It is likely that if this did not happen he would have pursued a career as a mariner.  He was first apprenticed to a shoe maker, but realized he could draw better than he could make shoes, so he went to Boston to study drawing and painting.  He later was apprenticed to the Pendleton’s Lithography shop in Boston along with Nathaniel Currier, J.W.A. Scott and others.  He would open a lithography shop in Boston with J.W.A. Scott called Lane & Scott’s Lithography.  

He is a noted marine painter whose use of light makes him one of the greatest painters in America before 1850.  It is not as well known that he produced a remarkable body of lithographs, both fine art, meaning after his own compositions, and for commercial purposes.