Oil on canvas                                                                                                
Dated 1879

Unframed  19″ x 15 1/4″                                                                             
Framed 21″ x 14 1/2″

Signed Walter Franklin Lansil                          
                                         
Signed LR

 

 

Presented is a charming painting of Boston Harbor as
it appeared in 1879. It was painted by artist Walter Franklin Lansil, a New Englander who had a feeling for ships and
the sea. The scene shows a dredge deepening a channel as its donkey engine spews smoke into a misty morning haze. Sails and buildings
along the shoreline are in the background. The sky is cloudy bright. The
condition of the painting is excellent and comes in a gilded wood frame.

THE ARTIST: Walter
Franklin Lansil, was born in Bangor, Maine in 1846. He was a noted marine painter of sailing ships, often in Venetian settings.
He first studied under J.P. Hardy in Bangor, and then at the Academie Julian in Paris from 1880-1882 and worked
in a style of French artist Feliz Ziem, who also painted in Venice. A long-time resident of Boston, Massachusetts,
he exhibited at the Boston Art Club from 1874-1909, becoming a member in 1877. He also showed at the National Academy of Design,
New York City, from 1878-1892, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. One of Lansil’s paintings of tall
ships is in the collection of the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College. He died in 1925 and is listed in Who Was
Who in American Art (1985) and by the J. Paul Getty Trust.

A moody morning in Boston Harbor with a dredge at work before this mist burns off                      Signed lower right                     Prestige name plate