The Golden State Entering New York Harbor

The Golden State Entering New York Harbor

Fitz Henry Lane (formerly Fitz Hugh Lane)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Influenced by the English-born, Boston-based painter Robert Salmon, Lane, early in his career, painted the ports and shipping vessels of Boston; of his native Gloucester, Massachusetts; and, for a time in the early 1850s, of New York City. The clipper ship Golden State was built in New York in 1852 and, as its name suggests, plied the seas around Cape Horn to California when overland travel across the North American continent was still unreliable and before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 made it no longer necessary to take such an extensive southern detour. The skyline of New York, as seen from New Jersey, is delineated in the background.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Golden State Entering New York HarborThe Golden State Entering New York HarborThe Golden State Entering New York HarborThe Golden State Entering New York HarborThe Golden State Entering New York Harbor

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.