BOSTON (AP) – His paintings of maritime scenes are displayed worldwide and have even found a place in the White House. A bronze statue of him overlooks Gloucester Harbor, the inspiration for some of his most famous scenes.

Too bad everyone got his name wrong.

Gloucester city archivists have discovered that the artist widely known as Fitz Hugh Lane was actually named Fitz Henry Lane.

The mistake, perpetrated for years by scholars, art dealers and collectors, has forced museums around the country to correct labels, catalogs and archival records.

“Everything has happened very, very quickly,” Daniel Finamore, curator of maritime art and history at the Peabody Essex, told The Boston Globe. “The news traveled much more rapidly than other types of discoveries” in the art world, he said.

The mistake was discovered about 18 months ago after John Wilmerding, a top Lane scholar, gave a lecture celebrating Lane’s 200th birthday at the Cape Ann Historical Museum in Gloucester. He challenged people to solve the mystery of why the artist, christened Nathaniel Rogers Lane, decided at age 27 to change his name.

A volunteer group, The Gloucester Archives Committee, began with an Internet search of name change petitions filed in Massachusetts in 1831, when Lane made the change. The only listing they found was for Fitz Henry Lane. They figured it was a misprint, even after the committee’s co-chairwoman, Sarah Dunlap, verified it in a copy of the state archives book.

The group was convinced only after Dunlap and three volunteers visited the state archives in Boston to pore through the original name change petitions for 1831. There, in Lane’s own handwriting, was a request to change his name to Fitz Henry Lane.

“It’s Henry!” Dunlap recalls shouting in the archives room.

It’s still unclear why and when people started calling Lane “Hugh.”

“At the time, Fitz Hugh was a common double name,” Wilmerding offered. “Accidentally, it was assumed the H’ stood for Hugh.”

Lane usually signed paintings “Fitz H. Lane,” “F.H. Lane,” or sometimes “F.H.L.” But on at least two occasions, he did sign “Fitz Henry Lane.” The two scenes of New York Harbor are part of collections at the Museum of the City of New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Andrea Henderson Fahnestock, curator of paintings and sculpture at the city museum, told the Globe by e-mail that the seemingly incorrect signatures had always been “simply a mystery.”

The first published reference to Lane as Fitz Hugh Lane appeared in early 20th century newspaper articles, when Lane’s work came back into vogue after falling out of favor during the rise of French Impressionism.

Museums have handled the name change differently. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston changed its labels last June. The Cape Ann Historical Museum plans a major relabeling and new exhibit on Lane next January. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem put up new labels in its maritime galleries that read “Fitz Henry (Hugh) Lane.” But for its new “Painting Summer” exhibit, the museum decided to simply label his work “Fitz Henry Lane.”

“We’ve come to grips,” Finamore said. “But it will be years before Fitz Henry comes out of my mouth naturally.”