The 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is upon us, and the Cincinnati Art Museum is celebrating (in part*) by highlighting works by American artists in the museum’s collection.

Enthusiasts of American history describe Boston and its environs as "the birthplace of the American Revolution." The city in the late 1700s was a prosperous, yet rough-and-tumble seaport of some 16,000 people with vital trading links to Great Britain, the Caribbean, southern Europe, and the other American colonies. (No surprise that Its combination of wealthy merchants and rowdy residents made it a likely place to spark rebellions against the crown!)

Boston along with other Massachusetts seaports—including Glouster, Nantucket, and New Bedford—soon became favorite subjects of artists who created works depicting the region’s harbors, ships, and towns. Here’s a look at three of those works in CAM’s collection. Each was created by a different American artist, and each reflects a distinctive artistic style of its day.

*This fall, the Cincinnati Art Museum continues its celebration of America’s 250th birthday, presenting three exhibitions featuring three American artists with ties to Cincinnati and southern Ohio: Nancy Rexroth, Charley Harper, and Terence Hammonds.

Buskin or Corset Stay, early 19th century, whale bone and ink, Carol R. Guggenheim Memorial Fund, 1958.421
On view in Gallery 219.

The sailors who made scrimshaw—engravings on whale bone, walrus ivory, and baleen—were whalers, seamen who traveled around the world in the nineteenth century on extended voyages to hunt whales and other sea mammals. Whalers experienced long days at sea without much to do in between hunts; one way they passed the time was to produce scrimshaw objects, like this corset stay.

An unnamed whaler-artist engraved this scene of a harbor town onto a polished piece of whale bone. As a corset stay, it’s an intimate object—worn in a sleeve sewn onto the corset’s front, close to the wearer’s heart. The artist most likely made this one for his wife or sweetheart; the depicted seaport might even represent the sailor’s hometown.

The artist created the image using a sharp metal tool, something we might recognize today as an awl with a thin tip. After the maker engraved the image into the surface of the bone, they filled in the lines with ink. This depiction of a seaport town (with its tall buildings huddled closely together), harbor (with its boats of different types and sizes), rural landscape (with cattle grazing on a wooded hill), and manor house (with its fenced-in yard, side wings, and many windows) captures an American scene of the early 1800s, created in a folk-art style.

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Fitz Henry Lane (American, 1804–1865), The Ships “Winged Arrow” and “Southern Cross” in Boston Harbor, 1853, oil on canvas, The Edwin and Virginia Irwin Memorial, 1971.31
On view in Gallery 217.

Artist Fitz Henry Lane (1804–1865) grew up in the New England seaport of Glouster, Massachusetts. The son of a sailmaker, Lane was intimately familiar with the sailing ships of his day from the time he was a boy. As a young man, he moved to Boston and apprenticed himself to a lithographer; it was there that Lane received his training in art making. A few years after learning the trade of lithography, he took up painting and soon became a sought-after artist known for his seascapes and ship portraits, often winning commissions from ship owners and captains.

The Ships "Winged Arrow" and "Southern Cross" in Boston Harbor (a double ship portrait commissioned by the ships’ owner) shows Lane’s mastery at depicting light. Here, the artist creates the illusion of sunlight penetrating and reflecting off the ocean’s waves. He paints the foreground waves in darker tones, then gradually transitions to lighter tones toward the middle ground, suggesting depth and distance. Far off, along the horizon line, Lane includes a hazy image of the city of Boston.

The tilted ships with their full sails, riding over a rough sea, give a sense of speed and movement and perhaps suggest the increasing prosperity of a growing Boston in the early 1800s.

Maurice Brazil Prendergast (American, 1859–1924), New England Harbor, circa 1919–23, oil on canvas, The Edwin and Virginia Irwin Memorial, 1959.51
On view in Gallery 212.

Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1859–1924) was born in the Canadian province of New Foundland and moved to Boston with his family as a child. He received his formal art training in Paris in the 1890s when French Post-Impressionism was at its height. The movement’s artists emphasized strong structural compositions in their paintings, using bold colors and accentuating the flatness of the picture plane. (Think of Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gaugin, and Seurat.)

In New England Harbor, rather than creating an illusion of depth and three-dimensionality using refined brushwork—standard practice for many artists during much of the 1800s and early 1900s—Prendergast painted his canvas with mosaic-like patterns, brilliant colors, and textured surfaces. In the picture, the artist relegated the harbor and bay to the background, almost as after-thoughts. Prendergast captured the vibrancy of this American scene by placing the townspeople up front and center, focusing on their colorful clothing and textile patterns, and painting the figures in an almost abstract way.