The Icebergs
1861 · Oil on canvas · Dallas Museum of Art
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About this work
- Artist
- Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900)
- Year
- 1861
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 163.8 × 285.8 cm
- Collection
- Dallas Museum of Art
- Movement
- Hudson River School
Towering icebergs glow turquoise, white and rose in the afternoon light of the North Atlantic; in the foreground, on a shelf of ice, lies the broken mast of a wrecked ship. Church chartered a boat in 1859 and spent a month sketching icebergs off Newfoundland and Labrador, at the height of public fascination with Arctic exploration and the lost Franklin expedition. He showed the finished canvas, nearly three metres wide, in New York in 1861 as The North, charging twenty-five cents admission; the Civil War had just begun, and before the picture travelled to London he retitled it The Icebergs and added the mast. The railway magnate Sir Edward Watkin bought it in England. It then vanished from view for most of a century until it was found in a school in Manchester in 1979 and sold at auction for a record 2.5 million dollars. Norma and Lamar Hunt gave it to the Dallas Museum of Art.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Icebergs glowing turquoise, white and rose with a broken mast on the ice, for a living room, bathroom or cool bedroom at 24×16 in black or oak. A white, pale blue or charcoal wall; it reads across a room and suits spare rooms.
- Style
- Hudson River School painting
- Era
- 19th century (1861)
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Mood
- calm
- Rooms
- living room, dining room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. Prints at 18×12, 24×16 in — 18×12 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 24×16 above a console or sideboard.
Framing. The gallery ground is part of the print, so frame it without a mat — black suits the deep tones of this period; oak lightens it.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is The Icebergs in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was The Icebergs painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.
