Furthermore, it has been suggested by art historian James A. Craig that because he could not play games as the other children did, he was forced to find some other means of amusement, and that in such a pursuit he discovered and was able to develop his talent for drawing.

In 1849, Lane began overseeing construction of a house/studio of his own design on Duncan's Point—this house would remain his primary residence to the end of his life.

As for why such employment was beneficial to the budding artist, art historian James A. Craig, in his book Fitz H. Lane: An Artist's Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America, the most comprehensive account of Lane's life and career, offers this illuminating description of the career evolution of the typical lithographer: "... an apprentice's schooling presumably began with the graining of stones, the making of lithographic crayons, and the copying of the designs and pictures of others onto limestone.

As his talents developed, the apprentice would find himself gradually taking on more challenging tasks, from drafting and composing images (the role of the designer) to ultimately being permitted to draw his own original compositions upon limestone (that most prestigious of ranks within the litho shop, the lithographic artist).

Since the compositional techniques employed in lithography differed little from those taught in European academic drawing, and the tonal work so necessary for the process to succeed was akin to that found in painting (indeed, when his studio began in 1825 John Pendleton specifically sought out painters for employment in his establishment due to their habits of thinking in tonal terms), an apprenticeship within a lithographic workshop like Pendleton's in Boston was roughly equivalent to that offered by fine art academies for beginning students.

"[3] Working in the lithography shop, Lane would have been taught the stylistic techniques for producing artistic compositions from the practiced seniors among his fellow employees.

Lane's career would ultimately find him painting harbor and ship portraits, along with the occasional purely pastoral scene, up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States, from as far north as the Penobscot Bay/Mount Desert Island region of Maine, to as far south as San Juan, Puerto Rico.

This balance does indeed seem to support the connection of Lane's works with Luminism, as one definition of luminist art is that "characterized by a heightened perception of reality carefully organized and controlled by principles of design.

As one of the styles of landscape painting to emerge in the nineteenth century, luminism embraced the contemporary preoccupation with nature as a manifestation of God's grand plan.

"[6] Other findings have shed new light onto not only Lane's artistic process but have also revealed him to have been a staunch social reformer, particularly within the American temperance movement.

A contemporary of the Hudson River School, he enjoyed a reputation as America's premier painter of marine subjects during his lifetime, but fell into obscurity soon after his death with the rise of French Impressionism.