An Arctic Summer: Boring Through the Pack in Melville Bay
1871
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
51 3/4 x 78 in. (131.4 x 198.1 cm); framed: 60 x 86 1/2 x 4 in.
Classification
Painting
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Erving and Joyce Wolf, in memory of Diane R. Wolf, 1982
Accession Number
1982.443.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
William Bradford's *An Arctic Summer: Boring Through the Pack in Melville* (1871) captures the raw drama of 19th-century Arctic exploration. This monumental oil on canvas, measuring over 6 feet wide, depicts a whaling ship forging through the treacherous ice pack of Melville Bay, off Greenland's northwest coast, during the fleeting summer light. Bradford, a pioneering American marine painter, drew from his own perilous voyages to the Arctic in the 1860s, blending firsthand observation with a realist's eye for nature's sublime power. As part of the Luminist tradition influenced by the Hudson R...