Creation Date
1828
Height
12 cm
Width
19 cm
Medium
Genre
Description
With its sweeping line of rock, startling juxtaposition of distant landscape with the nearer scene, and diminutive figures wrestling their boats over the "reef," this image is at once a picturesque re-visioning of a landscape and a record of exploration intended to reinforce British imperialist vision and scientific study.
Two groups of men drag rowboats over a rocky “reef,” which seems to be serving as a dam between one body of water (placid-looking) and another (which appears to be the sea). A strong curving line created by the reef extends from the immediate foreground towards a jagged mountain chain in the far background, referred to as the “British Chain of Mountains” in the subtitle.
Stuart C. Houston notes that:
The world’s greatest naval power and its underemployed navy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars found the continued presence of large blank areas on the world map an irresistible challenge. John Barrow, the powerful second secretary to the Admiralty, had strong backing from the newly important scientific community to renew the search for the Northwest Passage after a long wartime hiatus. (xiv)
In addition to simply providing visual aids for a travel narrative, then, Back’s images must be seen as integral to the literal illustration of those “large blank areas” that Britain wanted to conquer. Expedition imagery during the Romantic period addressed other needs as well, including the translation of “otherness”—which the Arctic so easily exemplified in its comparatively uninhabited starkness—into a culturally understandable, and thus accessible, space for national expansionism and the application of identity. Furthermore, in ostensibly drawing accurate portrayals of the landscape (which Franklin frequently confirms), Back created scientific records designed to both titillate and inform the British public and scientific community.
I.S. Maclaren argues that:
[T]he picturesque convention . . . seems at odds with the remarkable labor being performed under trying and sometimes extreme conditions. But this is an oddity inherent in description generally, for a descriptive passage nearly always suspends the impetus of narrative, not unlike the way that an illustration complements a narrative of exploration by interrupting its impetus. Part of this disjunction in mood between the momentary landscape enthusiast’s remarks and the explorer’s ongoing account arises because the making of a ‘scene’ or ‘view’ demands a standing back from the object of observation in order to make sense of it, to endue it with meaning; in short, to identify it. (292)
Notwithstanding Maclaren’s somewhat facile equation of the arresting of a scene with “description generally,” it is true that expedition imagery, especially when compared with accompanying narratives, can appear incongruently portrayed. Yet from Back’s descriptive title to the elevated viewpoint and extensive near-far movement, this image is clearly an "interruption" or "impetus," even as it visually describes the explorers' "ongoing" and "remarkable labor." As such, it is exemplary of Back's comprehensive aesthetic approach, which rather inconsistently sees the Arctic as both compellingly beautiful and picturesque—Back uses the word throughout his narrative—and as maddeningly difficult to traverse.
Locations Description
Mount Conybeare is a peak near the northwestern tip of Yukon Territory.
Publisher
John Murray
Collection
Accession Number
Thordarson T 1872
Additional Information
Bibliography
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