(piano music) Man: We're in the museum
of Fine Arts in Boston looking at Fitz Henry Lane's
Owl's Head Penobscot Bay, Maine. This is the place that Lane
spent a good deal of time and characteristic of this American
artist, sometimes called a luminist. We have this wonderfully
quiet still moment. Woman: And that's what we
mean by the term luminism. Landscape paintings by a
number of American painters where we have a sense
of calm and tranquility, views of water. A quality of light that
allows each element of the landscape to stand
out in perfect clarity but there is an overall mood of
contemplativeness and peacefullness. Man: It's so typical of American art, especially American marine painting. So this is dawn. We can see
the peach sky in the background
and the water is still calm. The winds of the day have not started. The ship in the background
just put up its sails and is trying to catch whatever
breeze is just beginning. We look out on this space
almost through the gaze of the fisherman we see in
the lower left of the canvas. Woman: This is very much
a romantic landscape. One that looks back to the
traditions of romanticism. We might think about Caspar David
Freidrich and the way he uses figures. Looking out to sea with their backs to us. Or we might even think about
John Constable in England painting his native landscape of
the Store Valley with that sense
of love of his native landscape. I think that we have that here with Lane. Man: There is a way that light
is able to take the careful rendering of the veracity that all
of this detail and clarity offers us. Man: But still render a
painting that is largely poetic. And that's really one of
the issues that is most central to luminism that even
with this high pitched specificity there is still room for a painting that
is ultimately one that is emotional, that is almost transcendental. Woman: I think that sense
of emotion comes through because of the lack of narrative incident. We're looking at a seascape but we don't
see fisherman busy with activities. We don't see ships coming in and unloading
cargo or other kind of narratives scenes that we might expect in a harbor. Man: Light is the main protagonist, not the human occupation of the space. Woman: In a way for me
the main protagonist is the house that we see
on that tiny little island, and that, as you said,
peach-colored light, that we all know so well from looking
at the water in the early morning. We're really transported to this place. I can almost hear the
water lapping at the shore. Man: This painting invites a kind
of careful, quiet, contemplation. Woman: It's very different from
other American landscape painting that we might think of by Albert Bierstadt or Frederic Church that is really
grand and operatic and sublime. It says something big and those
paintings are often very large and depict sublime scenes like the
Rocky Mountains or Niagara Falls, but here this kind of humble, quiet scene, a kind of different strain in
American landscape painting. (piano music)