Floe - Ice

William Bradford’s Floe - Ice presents a desolate Arctic scene of water and floating ice, populated only by a solitary seal hugging a snowy mound on the far right. In the center distance, the masts and rigging of a ship rise above the ice, an impotent human presence far beyond the viewer’s reach. Subdued, pervasive light suggests the oblique illumination provided by the sun low on the horizon during the Arctic’s endless summer day. Bradford, whose paintings of the frozen north were praised for their truthfulness to nature, rendered with meticulous care and naturalistic color the jagged contours of the ice floes as they glow with dull translucence on the chill surface of the sea. Painted with seeming scientific detachment and fidelity to detail, Bradford’s record of this region of extremes evinces the impassive power of natural forces and, by implication, the futility of human endeavors.

In the mid-nineteenth century, scientific discoveries and geographic exploration stimulated new interest in far-flung regions. Bradford was one of several American artist-explorers who traveled widely to capture in their art the magnificence and exoticism of distant places. Prominent among them were Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Bradford’s fellow tenants in New York’s bustling Tenth Street Studio Building. Church had visited the Arctic in 1859, a trip that yielded such works as The Iceberg, (TF 1993.6) also in the Terra Foundation’s collection. Long drawn to far-northern locales, Bradford in the 1860s moved quickly to establish himself as America’s premier painter of the Arctic. While Church painted icebergs as part of a broader program to encompass in his art the widest extremes of earth’s climate and geography, Bradford focused on the far north with passionate exclusivity.

  Three years after Bradford’s famed 1869 expedition to the Arctic, the last of several northwards voyages on which he made drawings for his paintings, he traveled to England. There, interest in the Arctic was at its most intense, and Bradford found several important patrons, among them Queen Victoria, for his views of the frozen wastes of the far north. Floe - Ice was among numerous paintings created during the artist’s time in England from drawings, oil sketches, and photographs made during his voyages. Typically, Bradford combined elements from these on-site records to create his compositions. Floe - Ice, however, is closely based on a single, virtually identical photograph, one of 144 included in The Arctic Regions, the lavish, limited-edition illustrated volume Bradford published by subscription in 1873. In translating the photograph’s subject into paint, the artist made only a few changes. By adding the seal, partly shrouding the ship’s masts in distant gloom, and eliminating the edge of his boat visible in the photograph, he heightened the scene’s drama and exoticism to evoke the feelings of awe, isolation, and doom inspired by the Arctic, then the last truly untamed region on earth.

Hudson River School Days, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York, New York (organizer). Venue: Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York, New York, November 18, 1992–January 9, 1993.

Rivières et rivages: les artistes américains, 1850–1900 (Waves and Waterways: American Perspectives, 1850–1900) Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000. [exh. cat.]

D'une colonie à une collection: le Musée d'Art Américain Giverny fête ses dix ans (From a Colony to a Collection: Celebrating the Tenth Anniversary of the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 30–June 16, 2002.

William Bradford: Sailing Ships & Arctic Seas, New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts (organizer). Venue: New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts, May 1–November 15, 2003. [exh. cat.]

American Classics, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, December 13, 2003–February 8, 2004.

To the Ends of the Earth, Painting the Polar Landscape, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (organizer). Venue: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, November 8, 2008–March 1, 2009. [exh. cat.]

Manifest Destiny, Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Loyola University Museum of Art, May 17–August 10, 2008. [exh. cat.]

Peindre L'Amérique les Artistes du Nouveau Monde (1830-1900), Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne, Switzerland (organizer). Venue: Fondation de l'Hermitage, Lausanne, Switzerland, June 27–October 26, 2014. [exh. cat.]

Kugler, Richard C. "William Bradford and the Royal Touch." The Magazine Antiques 163:6 (June 2003): 86–93. Pl. XIII, p. 91 (color).

Kugler, Richard C. William Bradford: Sailing Ships & Artic Seas. (exh. cat., The New Bedford Whaling Museum). New Bedford, Massachusetts: The New Bedford Whaling Museum in association with the University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2003. Text pp. 76–77; fig. 7, p. 76 (black & white), cat. 50, p. 136 (color).

Brownlee, Peter John. Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text p. 34 (checklist).

Scott, Samuel, et al. To the Ends of the Earth, Painting the Polar Landscape. (exh. cat., Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts). Salem, Massachusetts: Peabody Essex Museum, 2008. Text p. 9, Ill. PL. 16, p. 32 (color).

Hauptman, William. Peindre l’Amérique. Le artistes du Nouveau Monde 1830-1900 [Painting America, artists of the New World (1830-1900)]. trans. Jeanne Bouniort. (exh. cat., Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, Switzerland). Lausanne: La Bibliothèque des Arts, 2014. Cat. 57 ill. p. 120 (color), Text. p. 178 (checklist).