GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The Icebergs is a superb example of Frederic Edwin Church’s technical skill and clever marketing. The seductively inviting colors, glowing subterranean light, and glossy, tactile surfaces of the icebergs attract the viewer’s eye. Yet in reality, the scene is an inhospitable place filled with danger, as the broken mast in the foreground indicates.
In 1859, Church chartered a month long expedition in the North Atlantic, off the Canadian coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. He spent several weeks on a sixty-five ton schooner and used a small rowboat to venture over the deadly waters and closely study the forms and colors of icebergs in the Arctic landscape.
After returning to his New York City studio, Church relied on nearly one hundred pencil and oil sketches to create a large-scale painting of icebergs. As with his earlier blockbuster landscape, The Heart of the Andes (1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art), he paired his on-site observations with his imagination. His goal was to capture both the essence of his experiences among icebergs and the other-worldly sense of the Arctic environment, drawn from explorers’ written accounts and contemporary reports. The process took him less than six months, and The Icebergs was first exhibited in 1861.
Twelve days after the attack on Fort Sumter ignited the American Civil War, The Icebergs debuted in New York on April 24, 1861. While on view in the U.S., Church’s painting was titled The North, and all exhibition proceeds were donated the Union’s Patriotic Fund (today’s Red Cross). From New York , it traveled to Boston and continued to receive ardent praise from American audiences. Unfortunately, the war made buyers for such a monumental work hard to find. In 1863, Church decided to send the work to London, where he had a strong following and had profitably exhibited The Heart of the Andes as well as Niagara (1857, Corcoran Gallery of Art).
For its display, Church arranged to have The Icebergs draped in crimson and installed by itself in an opulently appointed room. Viewers paid a quarter to see the painting and received a printed broadside (descriptive essay) that gave an introduction to the unfamiliar vista. The text emphasized the various glacial features and dazzling optical effects on display.
During the preparations for sending the work abroad, Church altered it in two ways: a new title and the addition of a mast in the foreground. In deference to England’s support of the Confederate side of the Civil War, Church changed the title from The North to The Icebergs. (For many Americans, the Arctic North and the Union North were inextricably intertwined.) His exact reasons for the inclusion of the broken mast are unknown. The mast may refer to Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Northwest Passage, but it also served to establish scale in the painting. Several preliminary studies of the painting that include the mast as well as a full-scale boat indicate that Church struggled to adequately convey the immensity of the subject.
The work was well-received in England and soon purchased by Sir Edward William Watkin (1819-1901), a railroad magnate and member of Parliament. Apart from six years (1915-1921) when it hung in a nearby church, The Icebergs remained at Rose Hill, Watkin's estate in Northenden, outside of Manchester. The property changed hands several times until Rose Hill and its unrecognized artistic treasure were acquired by the City of Manchester to house a social services facility for boys. In 1978, Mair Baulch, the matron of the juvenile detention facility, brought the painting into public view in hopes of raising money to purchase a run-down piece of land for the boys’ recreation. Her hopes were far exceeded when, in 1979, The Icebergs sold at Sotheby’s for a price that broke all existing auction records for American paintings. It was immediately donated to the Dallas Museum of Art by an anonymous benefactor, revealed in 2010 to be Lamar and Norma Hunt of Dallas.
Adapted from
- William Keyse Rudolph, DMA Label copy (1979.28), May 2006.
- "Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs," DMA Connect, Dallas Museum of Art, 2012.
- Ken Kelsey, Gail Davitt, Mary Ann Allday, Troy Smythe, and Barbara Barrett, Art of the Americas at the Dallas Museum of Art, DMA Teaching Packet, 1994.
- Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002).
NOTES
This note was tagged #routed in June 2015 and Sue's revisions (in a Word doc created by ASG) have been applied to the note as of October 2015. As of January 2017 I am adding the #draft tag to this note so that it is harvested to Google Drive. Once I am sure that all pending TMS or Piction data entry is complete, I will remove the #routed tag, add the #complete tag, and move the Google Doc to Queta's folder so that it is not re-routed to Sue. Update- March 7, 2017- I have made all necessary changes and cleaned up the formatting of this note and associated CCs. I am removing the routed tag and adding the completed tag. The GDoc has been moved to Queta's folder for review.
Removed TMS tag because rule exists.
Fun fact sources:
OPERA- (Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1980), 65-68.)
NO MAST- (“Fine Arts. Mr. Church Among the Icebergs,” Albion (New York), May 4, 1861, 213, reprinted in Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1980), 82 and Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002), 63.)
1979 TRANSPORT- (Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002), 81.)
In the provenance, I changed the name of Sir Edward William Watkin's son from Alfred Mellow Watkin to Alfred Mellor Watkin according to both Carr (1980) and Harvey (2002).
The North was added as a previous title and noted as the title used for the first two exhibitions in exhibition history.
Need to add object number to Harvey book in Piction. https://issuu.com/dallasmuseumofart/docs/dma_voyageoftheicebergs?e=1467945/5992295
Need to add object number to Carr book in Piction.
Because I added the object number to Carr's book in Piction, I am removing this book as an "additional source" listed below the texts used for the general description. Whenever possible I will remove "additional sources" because this material could someday be presented through the TMS bibliographic data or as a web/Piction asset.
This work was also used in the teaching packet, "Stories in Art." This packet was pasted into Evernote as a separate note. The Icebergs was used to have students write an acrostic poem.
This work was used in the teaching packet, "A Looking Journey." This packet was pasted into Evernote as a separate note.
I removed the following link because I do not like the image or information quality offered by commercial "monograph" websites. "Frederic Edwin Church: The Complete Works," http://www.fredericedwinchurch.org. Accessed 9 February 2015. [Source included on DMA Connect.]
Current procedures do not allow me to add the following information to TMS:
London- exhibited
Northenden (near Manchester, England)- previous owner
Boston- exhibited
New York- exhibited
I found this educational game in 2014 in TAZ or other DMA shared drive. Unsure if it is useful to use on the future OLC?
DMA Icebergs game (in external drive)
The following image assets could not be added to Piction due to time constraints:
- Charles Risdon, after Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs, 1864. Oil over chromolithograph, 20-5/8 x 35-9/16 in. Published by Charles Day and Son, London. Olana State Historic Site, New York State Office of Parks and Recreation and Historic Preservation (OL.1988.744). Used as cover illustration of David C. Huntington, The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era (New York: George Braziller, 1966).
The following images appear as illustrations in Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002)
- Figure 4 (page 14)- Advertisement for the London debut of The Icebergs, London Court Journal, July 4, 1863, page 665. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 49)
- Figure 9 (page 19)- Advertisement for the 1861 New York City debut of The Heart of the Andes and The Icebergs, New York Morning Express, April 29, 1861. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 44)
- Figure 11. (page 21)- Rose Hill, Northenden, near Manchester, exterior from the southwest, 1980. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 54)
- Fig. 15 (page 24)- The Icebergs on view at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, September 1980. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr.
- Fig. 41 (page 74)- Rose Hill, Northenden, near Manchester, main staircase showing the wall (left) on which The Icebergs hung, 1980. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 55)
- Fig. 42 (page 75)- Mair Baulch standing next to The Icebergs ourside Rose Hill, Northenden, Manchester, 1978. Photograph courtesy of Glen Baulch. [Photo also reproduced in Dallas Museum of Art 100 Years, pamphlet 41)
- Fig 45 (page 79)- John L. Marion, Chairman of Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, auctioning Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs, October 25, 1979. (credited to Ted Thai, Time Inc.; reproduced in Dallas Museum of Art 100 Years, pamphlet 41; Carr (1980), fig. 2)
Catalogue essays specific to object
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Produced- Tenth Street Studio Building, New York City
Depicted- Saint John's (Canada)
Depicted- Labrador (region of Canada)
Depicted- Arctic Ocean
Depicted- Belle Isle Strait
Depicted- Battle Harbour (Canada)
Process/materials
oil paint
canvas
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
painting
Antarctic
arctic areas
Auction
blue
broadside
Civil War
climate
crimson
Danger
Discovery
epic
expedition
explorers
fee (compensation)
Foreground
geology
Glossy
green
ice
icebergs
landscape
Light
maritime history
marketing
mast
monumental
nationalism
polar climate
rose
Rowboat
Schooner
scientific
ships
shipwreck
Sketches
Studies
tragedy
water
white
RELATED OBJECTS
Provenance
By 1865- d. 1901: Sir Edward William Watkin (1819-1901), Rose Hill, Northenden, Manchester, England
1901-1902: His son, Sir Alfred Mellor Watkin, Manchester, England, by inheritance
1902-1915: William Joseph Parkyn, J.P., Manchester, England [1]
1915 -1921: St. Wilifred's Church, Northenden, Manchester, England by donation from above
1921-1979: Social Services Committee, City of Manchester, England, June 1921 and placed at Rose Hill by donation from above
From 1979: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Lamar Hunt (1932-2006), Dallas, TX, purchased from Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, NY, October 25, 1979 [2] [3]
Notes:
The main source for this provenance is Gerald L. Carr, "Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs" (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and University of Texas Press, 1980), 93-107. Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.
[1] Parkyn sold Rose Hill to the City of Manchester and donated the painting to St. Wilifred's Church, Northenden, Manchester, England.
[2] The name of the donor was not released to the public until 2010.
[3] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1933.
AUDIO ASSETS
DMA.mobi 104- Curator Sue Canterbury discusses this painting and "Learn about Frederic Edwin Church."
44997765: UMO
Collections smartphone audio about artist Frederic Edwin Church; related to The Icebergs (1979.28); DMA Collection
264287390: UMO; NO MOBI NUMBER IN PICTION CATALOGING.
Welcome Home: The Icerbergs Return. Gallery talk by Sue Canterbury, The Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art, DMA, about the painting The Icebergs in the DMA Collection [1979.28]
13310706: UMO
Soundscape for The Icergs (two assets in Piction)
65103358: UMO
65103372: UMO
Eleanor Jones Harvey, "The Icebergs: The Civil War and American Art," Lecture 10 Deptember 2013, Dallas Museum of Art.
13316668: UMO
Harry Parker interview, 3/9/2010
13317629: UMO
Harry Parker, "Harry Parker and the Icebergs," [Discussing moving American collection into the new building], 1983.
12933593: UMO
VIDEO ASSETS
Collection smARTphone video; Sue Canterbury discusses Frederic Edwin Church The Icebergs (DMA collection 1979.28)
12936934: UMO
Harry Parker, "Harry Parker and the Icebergs," [Discussing moving American collection into the new building], 1983. Filename: HarryParkerIcebergs, transcribed, original format: U-maticS. Transcript found on TAZ, audio file: HarryParkerIcebergs_01.mp3.
12933593: UMO
IMAGE ASSETS
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, November-December 1980
12053545: UMO
Frederic Church's Painting, The Icebergs: A Lost Masterpiece Rediscovered [Brochure], DMFA, 1980.
12057486: UMO
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, March-April 1981
12057507: UMO
The Voyage of the Icebergs, Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece [Exhibition Photographs- Icebergs with red curtains]
248524215: UMO
Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs, 1980 exh cat.
12712641: UMO
Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet (26 September 1819- 13 April 1901)
265931835: UMO
WEB RESOURCES
- Cold Case Closed~Check out curator Sue Canterbury's 2014 blog post on DMA's Uncrated, summarizing how recent maritime discoveries connect to Church's The Icebergs.
- Frederic Edwin Church's sketches~Look through some of the sketches from Church's arctic voyage (June-July 1858), in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
- Frederic Edwin Church: The Complete Works~See the variety of locations and landmarks represented in Church's paintings.
- Iceberg Map~Find out the latest locations of icebergs through this Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism map.
- Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs on the Move at the DMA~Watch this DMA YouTube video of the painting's installation in 2013.
- The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece~Enjoy this 2002 DMA exhibition catalogue written by Eleanor Jones Harvey and available online through Issu.
- Frederic Edwin Church, The Heart of the Andes (1859)~Look at another monumental landscape by this artist in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara (1857)~Look at another monumental landscape by this artists in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
- Church's search for frozen subjects took place aboard two ships. The first, from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Saint John's, Newfoundland, was called Merlin. The second, a chartered schooner from Saint John's into the northern waters of the Strait of Belle Isle and Battle Harbour, was the Integrity.
- In his catalogue for The Icebergs' debut at the Dallas Museum of Art, Gerald L. Carr proposes that contemporary operas may be "a less obvious but compelling parallel" to Church's landscape paintings of the late 1850s and early 1860s. In particular, Carr notes that the production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser (1845) contains a journey to disparate environments, religious symbolism, and romantic episodes with the goddess Venus in her enchanted grotto. In addition to compelling thematic and dramatic similarities, the opera premiered to American audiences in New York City, April 4, 1859—just before Church departed for his Arctic adventure.
- Evidence that when viewed by New Yorkers and Bostonians, The North did not include a broken mast, and that Church made this addition before presenting the painting as The Icebergs in London, comes from journalist's observations. A critic in New York commented The Icebergs had, "... no trace whatever of human association, not a living creature of any description, no ship, no boat, not even the semblance of a wreck, no connecting link of any sort between themselves and the canvas. One brown boulder of rock, lodged on the ice, alone hints that the great floating glacier was once in contact with earth.
- Transporting The Icebergs to Dallas after its purchase in 1979 proved to be a challenge—not only because of its size and heft, but also its headline-earning value. The shipper wrote “household items” on the crate to deflect attention from its contents. The ploy was too successful; the crate was bumped from its intended flight and sat in its container on the airport tarmac for a day before finally reaching Dallas safely.
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
Apply to objects where number equals 1979.28
Category
rules_operator
AND
General Description
The Icebergs is a superb example of Frederic Edwin Church’s technical skill and clever marketing. The seductively inviting colors, glowing subterranean light, and glossy, tactile surfaces of the icebergs attract the viewer’s eye. Yet in reality, the scene is an inhospitable place filled with danger, as the broken mast in the foreground indicates.
In 1859, Church chartered a month long expedition in the North Atlantic, off the Canadian coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. He spent several weeks on a sixty-five ton schooner and used a small rowboat to venture over the deadly waters and closely study the forms and colors of icebergs in the Arctic landscape.
After returning to his New York City studio, Church relied on nearly one hundred pencil and oil sketches to create a large-scale painting of icebergs. As with his earlier blockbuster landscape, The Heart of the Andes (1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art), he paired his on-site observations with his imagination. His goal was to capture both the essence of his experiences among icebergs and the other-worldly sense of the Arctic environment, drawn from explorers’ written accounts and contemporary reports. The process took him less than six months, and The Icebergs was first exhibited in 1861.
Twelve days after the attack on Fort Sumter ignited the American Civil War, The Icebergs debuted in New York on April 24, 1861. While on view in the U.S., Church’s painting was titled The North, and all exhibition proceeds were donated the Union’s Patriotic Fund (today’s Red Cross). From New York , it traveled to Boston and continued to receive ardent praise from American audiences. Unfortunately, the war made buyers for such a monumental work hard to find. In 1863, Church decided to send the work to London, where he had a strong following and had profitably exhibited The Heart of the Andes as well as Niagara (1857, Corcoran Gallery of Art).
For its display, Church arranged to have The Icebergs draped in crimson and installed by itself in an opulently appointed room. Viewers paid a quarter to see the painting and received a printed broadside (descriptive essay) that gave an introduction to the unfamiliar vista. The text emphasized the various glacial features and dazzling optical effects on display.
During the preparations for sending the work abroad, Church altered it in two ways: a new title and the addition of a mast in the foreground. In deference to England’s support of the Confederate side of the Civil War, Church changed the title from The North to The Icebergs. (For many Americans, the Arctic North and the Union North were inextricably intertwined.) His exact reasons for the inclusion of the broken mast are unknown. The mast may refer to Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Northwest Passage, but it also served to establish scale in the painting. Several preliminary studies of the painting that include the mast as well as a full-scale boat indicate that Church struggled to adequately convey the immensity of the subject.
The work was well-received in England and soon purchased by Sir Edward William Watkin (1819-1901), a railroad magnate and member of Parliament. Apart from six years (1915-1921) when it hung in a nearby church, The Icebergs remained at Rose Hill, Watkin's estate in Northenden, outside of Manchester. The property changed hands several times until Rose Hill and its unrecognized artistic treasure were acquired by the City of Manchester to house a social services facility for boys. In 1978, Mair Baulch, the matron of the juvenile detention facility, brought the painting into public view in hopes of raising money to purchase a run-down piece of land for the boys’ recreation. Her hopes were far exceeded when, in 1979, The Icebergs sold at Sotheby’s for a price that broke all existing auction records for American paintings. It was immediately donated to the Dallas Museum of Art by an anonymous benefactor, revealed in 2010 to be Lamar and Norma Hunt of Dallas.
Adapted from
- William Keyse Rudolph, DMA Label copy (1979.28), May 2006.
- "Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs," DMA Connect, Dallas Museum of Art, 2012.
- Ken Kelsey, Gail Davitt, Mary Ann Allday, Troy Smythe, and Barbara Barrett, Art of the Americas at the Dallas Museum of Art, DMA Teaching Packet, 1994.
- Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002).
Fun Facts
- Church's search for frozen subjects took place aboard two ships. The first, from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Saint John's, Newfoundland, was called Merlin. The second, a chartered schooner from Saint John's into the northern waters of the Strait of Belle Isle and Battle Harbour, was the Integrity.
- In his catalogue for The Icebergs' debut at the Dallas Museum of Art, Gerald L. Carr proposes that contemporary operas may be "a less obvious but compelling parallel" to Church's landscape paintings of the late 1850s and early 1860s. In particular, Carr notes that the production of Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser (1845) contains a journey to disparate environments, religious symbolism, and romantic episodes with the goddess Venus in her enchanted grotto. In addition to compelling thematic and dramatic similarities, the opera premiered to American audiences in New York City, April 4, 1859—just before Church departed for his Arctic adventure.
- Evidence that when viewed by New Yorkers and Bostonians, The North did not include a broken mast, and that Church made this addition before presenting the painting as The Icebergs in London, comes from journalist's observations. A critic in New York commented The Icebergs had, "... no trace whatever of human association, not a living creature of any description, no ship, no boat, not even the semblance of a wreck, no connecting link of any sort between themselves and the canvas. One brown boulder of rock, lodged on the ice, alone hints that the great floating glacier was once in contact with earth.
- Transporting The Icebergs to Dallas after its purchase in 1979 proved to be a challenge—not only because of its size and heft, but also its headline-earning value. The shipper wrote “household items” on the crate to deflect attention from its contents. The ploy was too successful; the crate was bumped from its intended flight and sat in its container on the airport tarmac for a day before finally reaching Dallas safely.
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Cold Case Closed~Check out curator Sue Canterbury's 2014 blog post on DMA's Uncrated, summarizing how recent maritime discoveries connect to Church's The Icebergs.
- Frederic Edwin Church's sketches~Look through some of the sketches from Church's arctic voyage (June-July 1858), in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
- Frederic Edwin Church: The Complete Works~See the variety of locations and landmarks represented in Church's paintings.
- Iceberg Map~Find out the latest locations of icebergs through this Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism map.
- Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs on the Move at the DMA~Watch this DMA YouTube video of the painting's installation in 2013.
- The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece~Enjoy this 2002 DMA exhibition catalogue written by Eleanor Jones Harvey and available online through Issu.
- Frederic Edwin Church, The Heart of the Andes (1859)~Look at another monumental landscape by this artist in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara (1857)~Look at another monumental landscape by this artists in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Notes
This note was tagged #routed in June 2015 and Sue's revisions (in a Word doc created by ASG) have been applied to the note as of October 2015. As of January 2017 I am adding the #draft tag to this note so that it is harvested to Google Drive. Once I am sure that all pending TMS or Piction data entry is complete, I will remove the #routed tag, add the #complete tag, and move the Google Doc to Queta's folder so that it is not re-routed to Sue. Update- March 7, 2017- I have made all necessary changes and cleaned up the formatting of this note and associated CCs. I am removing the routed tag and adding the completed tag. The GDoc has been moved to Queta's folder for review.
Removed TMS tag because rule exists.
Fun fact sources:
OPERA- (Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1980), 65-68.)
NO MAST- (“Fine Arts. Mr. Church Among the Icebergs,” Albion (New York), May 4, 1861, 213, reprinted in Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1980), 82 and Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002), 63.)
1979 TRANSPORT- (Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002), 81.)
In the provenance, I changed the name of Sir Edward William Watkin's son from Alfred Mellow Watkin to Alfred Mellor Watkin according to both Carr (1980) and Harvey (2002).
The North was added as a previous title and noted as the title used for the first two exhibitions in exhibition history.
Need to add object number to Harvey book in Piction. https://issuu.com/dallasmuseumofart/docs/dma_voyageoftheicebergs?e=1467945/5992295
Need to add object number to Carr book in Piction.
Because I added the object number to Carr's book in Piction, I am removing this book as an "additional source" listed below the texts used for the general description. Whenever possible I will remove "additional sources" because this material could someday be presented through the TMS bibliographic data or as a web/Piction asset.
This work was also used in the teaching packet, "Stories in Art." This packet was pasted into Evernote as a separate note. The Icebergs was used to have students write an acrostic poem.
This work was used in the teaching packet, "A Looking Journey." This packet was pasted into Evernote as a separate note.
I removed the following link because I do not like the image or information quality offered by commercial "monograph" websites. "Frederic Edwin Church: The Complete Works," http://www.fredericedwinchurch.org. Accessed 9 February 2015. [Source included on DMA Connect.]
Current procedures do not allow me to add the following information to TMS:
London- exhibited
Northenden (near Manchester, England)- previous owner
Boston- exhibited
New York- exhibited
I found this educational game in 2014 in TAZ or other DMA shared drive. Unsure if it is useful to use on the future OLC?
DMA Icebergs game (in external drive)
The following image assets could not be added to Piction due to time constraints:
- Charles Risdon, after Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs, 1864. Oil over chromolithograph, 20-5/8 x 35-9/16 in. Published by Charles Day and Son, London. Olana State Historic Site, New York State Office of Parks and Recreation and Historic Preservation (OL.1988.744). Used as cover illustration of David C. Huntington, The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era (New York: George Braziller, 1966).
The following images appear as illustrations in Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Voyage of the 'Icebergs': Frederic Edwin Church's Arctic Masterpiece (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002)
- Figure 4 (page 14)- Advertisement for the London debut of The Icebergs, London Court Journal, July 4, 1863, page 665. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 49)
- Figure 9 (page 19)- Advertisement for the 1861 New York City debut of The Heart of the Andes and The Icebergs, New York Morning Express, April 29, 1861. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 44)
- Figure 11. (page 21)- Rose Hill, Northenden, near Manchester, exterior from the southwest, 1980. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 54)
- Fig. 15 (page 24)- The Icebergs on view at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, September 1980. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr.
- Fig. 41 (page 74)- Rose Hill, Northenden, near Manchester, main staircase showing the wall (left) on which The Icebergs hung, 1980. Photograph courtesy of Gerald L. Carr. (also reproduced in Carr (1980), fig. 55)
- Fig. 42 (page 75)- Mair Baulch standing next to The Icebergs ourside Rose Hill, Northenden, Manchester, 1978. Photograph courtesy of Glen Baulch. [Photo also reproduced in Dallas Museum of Art 100 Years, pamphlet 41)
- Fig 45 (page 79)- John L. Marion, Chairman of Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, auctioning Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs, October 25, 1979. (credited to Ted Thai, Time Inc.; reproduced in Dallas Museum of Art 100 Years, pamphlet 41; Carr (1980), fig. 2)
Catalogue essays specific to object
Artist/designers
Cultures
Geography
Produced- Tenth Street Studio Building, New York City
Depicted- Saint John's (Canada)
Depicted- Labrador (region of Canada)
Depicted- Arctic Ocean
Depicted- Belle Isle Strait
Depicted- Battle Harbour (Canada)
Process/materials
oil paint
canvas
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
painting
Antarctic
arctic areas
Auction
blue
broadside
Civil War
climate
crimson
Danger
Discovery
epic
expedition
explorers
fee (compensation)
Foreground
geology
Glossy
green
ice
icebergs
landscape
Light
maritime history
marketing
mast
monumental
nationalism
polar climate
rose
Rowboat
Schooner
scientific
ships
shipwreck
Sketches
Studies
tragedy
water
white
RELATED OBJECTS
Provenance
By 1865- d. 1901: Sir Edward William Watkin (1819-1901), Rose Hill, Northenden, Manchester, England
1901-1902: His son, Sir Alfred Mellor Watkin, Manchester, England, by inheritance
1902-1915: William Joseph Parkyn, J.P., Manchester, England [1]
1915 -1921: St. Wilifred's Church, Northenden, Manchester, England by donation from above
1921-1979: Social Services Committee, City of Manchester, England, June 1921 and placed at Rose Hill by donation from above
From 1979: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Lamar Hunt (1932-2006), Dallas, TX, purchased from Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, NY, October 25, 1979 [2] [3]
Notes:
The main source for this provenance is Gerald L. Carr, "Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs" (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and University of Texas Press, 1980), 93-107. Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.
[1] Parkyn sold Rose Hill to the City of Manchester and donated the painting to St. Wilifred's Church, Northenden, Manchester, England.
[2] The name of the donor was not released to the public until 2010.
[3] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1933.
AUDIO ASSETS
DMA.mobi 104- Curator Sue Canterbury discusses this painting and "Learn about Frederic Edwin Church."
44997765: UMO
Collections smartphone audio about artist Frederic Edwin Church; related to The Icebergs (1979.28); DMA Collection
264287390: UMO; NO MOBI NUMBER IN PICTION CATALOGING.
Welcome Home: The Icerbergs Return. Gallery talk by Sue Canterbury, The Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art, DMA, about the painting The Icebergs in the DMA Collection [1979.28]
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Soundscape for The Icergs (two assets in Piction)
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Eleanor Jones Harvey, "The Icebergs: The Civil War and American Art," Lecture 10 Deptember 2013, Dallas Museum of Art.
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Harry Parker interview, 3/9/2010
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Harry Parker, "Harry Parker and the Icebergs," [Discussing moving American collection into the new building], 1983.
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VIDEO ASSETS
Collection smARTphone video; Sue Canterbury discusses Frederic Edwin Church The Icebergs (DMA collection 1979.28)
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Harry Parker, "Harry Parker and the Icebergs," [Discussing moving American collection into the new building], 1983. Filename: HarryParkerIcebergs, transcribed, original format: U-maticS. Transcript found on TAZ, audio file: HarryParkerIcebergs_01.mp3.
12933593: UMO
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1979.28
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object_notes_2_a-0525.xml.nores