“Fitz Henry Lane”

Welcome to Museum Reads, the Newport Art Museum’s Art-Themed book group for adults! Are you looking to learn more about art and artists, or enjoy digging into some of the issues present in our current exhibitions? Then this friendly discussion group is for you. We meet monthly on the third Thursday at 12 noon, in person and virtually. Join us virtually from the office for an invigorating lunch break, or enjoy an hour of inspiration during a wee one’s nap time, or find us in the gallery for in-person conversation.

Fitz Henry Lane by James A. Craig

Fitz H. Lane’s maritime masterpieces are known throughout the world, but the man himself has eluded both historians and art critics for over a century.

The Luminist painter’s successful career began in his early childhood in picturesque Gloucester, Massachusetts and his talents developed and matured over time, making him one of the nation’s premier nineteenth-century artists.

Throughout his career, Lane painted with a vitality and attention to detail that was purely American at heart, and it is in pursuit of this ideal that James Craig embarks on a detective’s investigation to reconstruct with accuracy and honesty the details of a man about whom much has been written but little revealed. Few clues remain today about the artist who so thoroughly embodied the American spirit during “one of humanity’s most dramatic and confusing historical epochs.” Lane’s era was one of great change for America, and both he and his art were there to capture that spirit.

This dazzling and exhaustive effort provides the first glimpse behind the canvas, beyond the career and into the soul of Fitz H. Lane. Passionate, stunning and thrilling, this is a narrative that returns life and color to a man intent or preserving and presenting the life of the culture he loved. James Craig has given Gloucester back one of her favorite sons.

Museum Reads is free for Members, and $5 for yet-to-be Members.  

Be sure to register online to receive email updates and Zoom links.
For last minute registrations, please call the front desk for the Zoom link at 401-848-8200.

James A. Craig, an independent curator, author and lecturer specializing in American marine art, became enamored with New England’s maritime saga while studying Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts.

Having by his own admission “fallen” into the world of fine art, Craig was first employed at the House of the Seven Gables Museum in Salem, MA, where he served as a curatorial assistant and museum educator. He went on to serve as Associate Curator for Collections at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he published an award winning biography on the great American marine painter Fitz Henry Lane.

Besides “Fitz H. Lane: An Artist’s Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America” (The History Press, 2006) he has published “100 Essex Road: an American Treasure” about the George Cabot Lee estate in Newton, Massachusetts, 2008, and “Frank Vining Smith: Maritime Painting in the 20th Century” (Hard Press Editions, 2010).