Owl’s Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine

Fitz Henry Lane’s Owl’s Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine is a masterwork of Luminism, the American movement that carried the Hudson River School’s reverence for nature into an almost mystical stillness. A schooner moves across a mirror-calm bay beneath the wooded promontory of Owl’s Head, while the sky and sea are filled with a serene, suffused light. Lane, who grew up on the Maine coast, painted its harbors with an accuracy and tranquility unmatched by any of his contemporaries.