The Icebergs

Frederic Edwin Church painted The Icebergs in 1861, after a month-long voyage to the Arctic waters off Newfoundland and Labrador. He was 35 and the most successful landscape painter in America, and he had been traveling to extreme locations to find subjects for his large canvases. A massive iceberg fills the center of the canvas, its walls of blue and white ice rising from a dark sea. Smaller icebergs float in the distance, and a strip of open water runs across the foreground. The sky is a cold, luminous grey, with light breaking through the clouds at the upper left. The ice is painted in precise detail: cracks, caves, and facets of blue and green catch the light. The canvas is large, roughly 64 by 112 inches, landscape format. The scale is overwhelming: the viewer is placed at the waterline, looking up at the ice. Church had been the star pupil of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School. By 1861 he was painting on a scale that no other American landscape painter attempted. He exhibited his large canvases as single-picture shows in New York and Boston, charging admission. The Icebergs was shown in this way in 1861, under the title "The North." American painting of the early 1860s was shaped by the Civil War, which began in April 1861. Church painted The Icebergs during the first months of the war, and the painting was first exhibited in New York just weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter. The original title, "The North," may have carried political overtones. The painting was later shown in England under the title The Icebergs, and it disappeared from public view for over a century. It was rediscovered in 1979 and acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art. Oil on canvas, 163 by 286 centimeters. Church painted with a precise, controlled technique, building the ice in layers of blue, white, and green. The surface of the water is dark and reflective, with the icebergs mirrored in it. The sky is painted in thin, layered washes of grey and white, with the light source at the upper left. This painting works in a living room, study, or office with enough wall space for a large print. The cool palette of blues and whites suits a room with grey, blue, or white walls. The 18x24 framed version in a white frame is the most versatile size. The horizontal format works well above a sofa or console table. The painting is in the Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Luce Foundation. This is a public domain artwork, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.