Hayes, a friend of Church, named an Arctic peak at the Kennedy Channel after Church in the summer of 1861. He was a member of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, where the Arctic explorer Isaac Israel Hayes had lectured, and in 1859 he journeyed to the Arctic himself. Church too was interested in the Arctic, and in science and geography. Francis Leopold McClintock finally uncovered the fate of Franklin and his crew, which he described in an 1859 book. In 1856 the American explorer Elisha Kane published an account of his own expedition to determine Franklin's fate. The disappearance of the expedition of British explorer John Franklin, who had planned to navigate the Northwest Passage, was a popular press topic in the 1850s.

Ĭhurch painted The Icebergs at a time of general interest in Arctic exploration. In the original version of the finished painting, no portion of a ship appeared at all-reducing the narrative possibilities of the picture-but Church later added the ship mast to the finished painting. The buyers, later identified as businessman Lamar Hunt and his wife Norma, donated the canvas to the Dallas Museum of Art, where it remains today.īackground In Church's final study for the painting, a stranded ship at right appears in place of the boulder. The Icebergs was auctioned for US$2.5 million, the most of any American painting to that point. It was soon put to auction in New York City, drawing significant interest as its sale coincided with renewed critical interest in Church, who had been largely forgotten in the 20th century. In 1979, the painting, which a number of New York City galleries were now hunting, was rediscovered in a home in Manchester, England, where it had remained for most of the intervening 78 years. He eventually sold the painting in England, where it disappeared from the art-world's awareness after the buyer's death in 1901. Between exhibitions in the US and England, Church added the ship mast to the painting, and retitled the work from its original The North. The painting became popular within Church's oeuvre and inspired other landscape artists' interest in the Arctic, but its apparent lack of narrative or allegory perplexed some viewers. The unconventional landscape of ice, water, and sky generally drew praise, but the American Civil War, which began the same year, lessened critical and popular interest in New York City's cultural events. Similar exhibitions in Boston and London followed. It was first displayed in New York City in 1861, where visitors paid 25 cents' admittance to the one-painting show. Considered one of Church's 'Great Pictures'-measuring 1.64 by 2.85 metres (5.4 by 9.4 feet) -the painting depicts one or more icebergs in the afternoon light of the Arctic. It was inspired by his 1859 voyage to the North Atlantic around Newfoundland and Labrador. The Icebergs is an 1861 oil painting by the American landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church.

Aurora borealis frederic edwin church