Iceberg Fantasy

Iceberg at Twilight, Canada

Iceberg at Midnight, Labrador

Icebergs at Sunset, Canada

Iceberg and Ice Flower, Canada

Icebergs near Cape St. John, Canada

Icebergs at Sea near Newfoundland, Canada

Aurora Borealis

Iceberg

The Story of the Iceberg

An Arctic Summer: Boring Through the Pack in Melville Bay

Among the Ice Floes

Arctic Regions: Hunting by Steam in Melville Bay, The Party after a Day's Sport Killing Six Polar Bears within the Twenty-Four Hours

Arctic Regions: Page 33, no. 39, Iceberg with an Arch in It, Which,When Connected with the Glacier, Will Give the Reader to Understand How the Water Flows from the Glacier through these Arches, Causing the Rapid Current

The Arctic Regions: No. 36. The Glacier As Seen Flowing Or Being Forced Down Between The Hills, Ploughing Up A Moraine Of Earth And Rocks, Twenty To Thirty Feet High

Arctic Regions: Page 34, No. 41, Enlarged View of No. 33

USFC Steamer "Albatross" Survey of Fishing Banks from Newport to Newfoundland, 1885

Platter (Alaskan scene)

Pitcher (Alaskan scene)

Goblet (Alaskan scene)

Icebergs behoove the soul / (both being self-made from elements least visible) / to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.––Elizabeth Bishop, The Imaginary Iceberg (1935) Nineteenth-century explorers described icebergs as gothic cathedrals, mountains of jewels, and vast ruined cities. Enormous yet ephemeral, the iceberg defied visual representation. How does one create an "objective" image of an object that drifts, refracts, and melts away as it is being observed? This collection traces how American artists and image-makers attempted to stabilize ice, communicating newfound scientific knowledge to general audiences back home and transforming these troublesome entities into commodities that could be possessed. The collection opens with field sketches produced by Frederic Edwin Church during his 1859 voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador, situating the iceberg within the nineteenth-century tradition of the sublime. Church created these intimate oil studies in situ, fastidiously recording the shifting appearance of icebergs at twilight, at midnight, in the Arctic summer's strange continuous light. These were working documents, never intended for exhibition. They reflect the repetitive observational labor underpinning Church's celebrated monumental canvases. Notably, pure white pigment is largely missing from these wondrous, prismatic images. Church's Aurora Borealis (1865), painted from sketches by polar explorer Isaac Israel Hayes, brought the Arctic to the American public at the height of the Civil War. The shimmering, multi-colored light of the Aurora was read by contemporary viewers as either a terrible portent or the promise of a better unified Republic. William Bradford's massive exhibition paintings were also informed by field studies conducted on his 1869 Greenland voyage. Bradford was accompanied by photographers John L. Dunmore and George P. Critcherson, whose works were published in the landmark folio Arctic Regions (1873). Read in concert with one another, Bradford's paintings and the Dunmore &amp; Critcherson photographs depict icebergs as aesthetic objects, scientific specimens, and fruitful hunting grounds. One folio plate title explains the hydraulics of glacial arches for the purpose of public science education. Another records the killing of six polar bears within twenty-four hours. This collection closes with three pressed glass objects — a matching platter, pitcher, and goblet — manufactured by the Crystal Glass Company of Bridgeport, Ohio, in 1867. Critically, this was the year of the Alaska Purchase. These crystalline scenes of polar bears, seals, and icebergs rendered in frosted glass brought the Arctic to the American dinner table. The iceberg, once the privileged domain of the heroic explorer, had become a thing to be bought, sold, and displayed by American consumers.

"All Light and Brilliant": Icebergs in the Nineteenth-Century American Imaginary

"All Light and Brilliant": Icebergs in the Nineteenth-Century American Imaginary

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