The art of the Arctic: British painting in the Far North

Abstract

At various times through history, particularly toward the end of the eighteenth century and periodically throughout the nineteenth century, public interest in the Arctic and its exploration has been stimulated by published expedition reports and narratives of personal experiences in that inaccessible region. These and many unpublished accounts of travel in the Far North have been insightfully studied and analysed by literary, geographical and social historians. Artistic depictions of Arctic exploration are far less common than written ones and have not received the same degree of scholarly attention. This article examines representative examples of Arctic imagery created by British artists during the golden age of Arctic exploration. The highly romanticised – if largely imaginary – work of professional painters is compared with the more accurate, if sometimes less artistic, first-hand depictions created by naval officers who endured the challenges of Arctic travel. A shift from slightly fanciful, optimistic views of Arctic exploration to more sombre treatments of the subject is discussed in the context of the endeavour.

Keywords:

• Arctic art
• exploration
• landscape painting
• Northwest Passage
• panoramas
• Polar Regions

Notes

Peck, ‘Icy embellishments’. An expanded discussion of this topic will be found in North by degree, edited by Robert M. Peck and Susan A. Kaplan, to be published by the American Philosophical Society in 2013.

Landseer's painting was almost certainly inspired by the lost Franklin expedition. Friedrich's painting may have been inspired by published reports of Parry's 1818–19 expedition with Ross to Baffin's Bay (Parry's diary was published in 1821). Source sketches were made by Friedrich of the frozen Elbe during the winter of 1820–1. See Stacey, ‘From “icy picture” to “extensive prospect” ’, 156.

Of the many official and unofficial accounts of polar exploration, a disproportionate number were printed and sold by the London publisher John Murray, who had a close personal relationship with John Barrow, Second Lord of the Admiralty, the man who organised and authorised the expeditions whose accomplishments and adventures John Murray helped to publicise.

In some cases, the captains of the vessels became the principal artists (most notably John Ross, Henry Parkyns Hoppner, George Francis Lyon and Edward A. Inglefield). The artists on Phipps's and Cook's polar voyages were John Cleveley Jnr and John Webber, respectively.

I.S. MacLaren, commentary in Back, Arctic artist, 293.

Martin, ‘ “Toward no earthly pole” ’, 89.

Instructions cited in Ross, A voyage of discovery, 234.

Henry Hoppner, for example, who served on three Arctic expeditions with William Edward Parry, was the son of a professional portrait painter. His friend and fellow explorer Frederick William Beechey was the son of the Royal Academy court painter Sir William Beechey (for whom Beechey Island on Lancaster Sound is named). Stam, Books on ice, 26

These were usually ‘interpreted’ for publication by professionally trained artists as part of the publishing process. While the changes made to the original field studies invariably refined their aesthetic qualities, they often changed the feeling the pictures evoked, reducing – or sometimes enhancing – the dramatic impact of the events the artists had experienced at first hand.

The number of public panorama displays depicting Arctic expeditions gives witness to the subject's enduring appeal. These began in 1785 (a panorama of Captain Cook's search for the Northwest Passage) and ended in 1876 (with the last Royal Navy expedition to the North Pole under the command of George S. Nares). For further information on panoramas, see Attack, The shows of London, and Hyde, Panoramamania! For a detailed account of Arctic panoramas in particular, see Potter, Arctic spectacles.

Snow, Voyage of the Prince Albert, 249. The panorama he was remembering was entitled ‘Arctic regions’. It was painted by Robert Burford based on paintings made by Lt William H.J. Browne during the expeditions of James C. Ross in HMS Enterprise (1848–9) and Captain Austin in HMS Resolute the following year.

The Arctic was famous for its optical illusions. For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Spufford, I may be some time, 80–4.

Back, Arctic land expedition, 63.

Moss, Shores of the Polar Sea, 42.

MacGahan, Under the northern lights, 225–6.

Ross, A voyage of discovery, 202.

ibid.; Back, Arctic land expedition, 254; Moss, Shores of the Polar Sea, 32.

Parry, Journal of a voyage, ix. Parry had already had two expeditions totalling three years of experience in the Arctic when he made these comments, beginning with his command of HMS Alexander during Captain John Ross's expedition to Baffin's Bay in 1818, and then as captain of HMS Griper during his own voyage for the discovery of a Northwest Passage in 1819–20.

For a good discussion of the picturesque as it relates to Arctic painting see I.S. MacLaren, in Back, Arctic artist, 287–90, and Stacey, ‘From “icy picture” to “extensive prospect” ’.

Moss, Shores of the Polar Sea, 39.

MacGahan, Under the northern lights, 1.

ibid., 31.

ibid., 226.

ibid., 227, 262.

Andrews, Famous frosts; Humphrys, ‘Winter ice spectaculars’; Reed, Frost fairs.

Stacey, ‘From “icy picture” to “extensive prospect” ’, 155.

Moss, Shores of the Polar Sea, 47.

ibid., 44.

Scoresby, Voyage to the northern whale-fishery, 84.

ibid., 84–6.

MacGahan, Under the northern lights, 15–16.

The engraving is noted as having been ‘drawn and engraved by W. Westall ARA from a sketch by Lieut Beechey’, in Parry, Journal of a voyage, 16.

Suggestions made by John Rae and others that the final desperate phase of Franklin's expedition may have included cannibalism (euphemistically referred to as ‘the last resource’) were adamantly rejected by Charles Dickens and others. ‘It is in the highest degree improbable,’ wrote Dickens in Household Words, ‘that such men would, or could, in any extremity of hunger, alleviate the pains of starvation by this horrible means.’ Quoted in Berton, The Arctic Grail, 268. For a discussion of Dickens's reaction to cannibalism on the Franklin Expedition, see also Spufford, I may be some time, 125–6, 177, 197–9.

There were also a number of Franklin search expeditions hailing from the United States and Russia, but these do not fall within the scope of this article.

Several scholars have suggested that Arctic views by American artists during the nineteenth century are generally more optimistic than those by British artists. See, especially, Martin, ‘ “Toward no earthly pole” ’ and Pringle, ‘Cold comfort’.

It should be noted that while the altruistic search for Sir John Franklin and his crew was often given as the primary objective for British expeditions after 1847, the Admiralty continued to be interested in the search for the Northwest Passage and the basic charting of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions.

The story of Nelson and the polar bear continued to appear in popular accounts of Nelson's life throughout the nineteenth century. An 1860 chromolithograph of the encounter by Henry Noel Humphreys (Scott Polar Research Institute collection, accession number 78/11) shows the young Nelson, dressed in an admiral's hat (!), battling not one but three polar bears. The accompanying text explains that Nelson had ‘feigned not to hear the signal of recall’ to his ship ‘and remained some time in chase of his game’. Such action, the print-seller reminds us, exhibited Nelson's courage and independence, ‘some of his most brilliant exploits, as is well known, having been effected by a similar disregard of prudent signals, which he declared he could not see’.

Moss, Shores of the Polar Sea, 42.

In Ross, A voyage of discovery, opposite 208.

Personal correspondence with Kim Sloan, 23 January 2007. See also Sloan, A new world and McDermott, Martin Frobisher, 180–1.

See Sturtevant and Quinn, ‘This new prey’, especially 96–7.

Ross explained that Sacheuse received his artistic training from ‘Mr Nasmyth, the artist, who introduced him to Sir James Hall’. Sir James, in turn, introduced the talented Greenlander to Captain Basil Hall, who introduced him to the Admiralty, by whom he was ‘engaged as an interpreter’ for Ross's expedition. See Ross, A voyage of discovery, xxii.

Illustrated London News, 1 Jan. 1881, supplement, 18.

ibid., 19.

Martin, ‘ “Toward no earthly pole” ’, 91.

‘Burford's panorama of the polar regions’, Illustrated London News, 23 Feb. 1850, 133.

Burford, Polar regions, 1, 10. Distemper is a process of painting in which pigments are mixed with water and a glue-size or casein binder, used for flat wall decoration or for scenic and poster painting.

In his programme for the panorama, Burford acknowledged that he was ‘indebted for the loan of the various Furs, to Mr Rahles, 332, Oxford Street, corner of Regent Circus, who supplied the Expedition’; Burford, Polar regions, 15.

Quoted in Spufford, I may be some time, 176.

The first graves of the expedition to be discovered (on Beechy Island) were illustrated in the Illustrated London News, 4 Oct. 1851, 409. The images of the first Franklin relics, collected by John Rae, were published in the Illustrated London News, 4 Nov. 1854, 433. The journal was an increasingly influential publication thanks, at least in part, to its ability to cover news stories like the Franklin search graphically. Its circulation grew from 130,000 copies per week in 1855 to 300,000 copies in 1863. See Sinnema, Dynamics of the pictured page, 16.

Lewis-Jones, ‘Heroism displayed’, 188.

In a message left in a cairn by the Franklin crew, discovered by Leopold McClintock on 6 May 1859, it was recorded that Sir John Franklin had died on 11 June 1847, before the men had abandoned the expedition ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to walk south.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Sir John Franklin's cenotaph, Westminster Abbey, London, 1875, quoted in full in Loomis, ‘The Arctic sublime’, 110.

McGhee, The last imaginary place.