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Image

William Bradford

Arctic Sunset, 1874

Now On View

Description

Title

Arctic Sunset

Year

1874

Medium

Oil on canvas

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • oil paint

Supports

  • canvas mounted on wood

Dimensions

51.4 x 76.8 cm (20 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signed LR in brown:W. Bradford 74

Type

  • Paintings

Credit

Gift of Mrs. George H. Davenport

Object Number

18.192

Projects & Publications

Publications

Selection VII

American Painting from the Museum's Collection, c.1800-1930

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Making It In America

October 11, 2013 - February 9, 2014

A New Bedford native and practicing Quaker, Bradford sought evidence of God’s role in nature and strove to record “every dash of color which the great Painter in his benevolence vouchsafed to us.” In the summer of 1869 he made his second trip to the northeastern Canadian coast, accompanied by photographers equipped with large-format cameras and glass-plate negatives. Freezing temperatures prohibited painting out-of-doors, but Bradford made color notations, snugly dressed in “the sealskin suits of the Eskimeaux.” The photographic images were instrumental in creating Arctic Sunset, as they captured natural phenomena such as light glancing off huge expanses of ice.

Arctic Sunset takes the viewer to the end of the earth and the edge of a magical gold and orange low-lying sunset, existing apart from the frenzy of human activities and the Civil War that raged during the several years that separated Bradford’s expeditions. White ice mountains and icebergs reflect and refract the light. A beauty this impossible requires a dispassionate photographic eye. Traveling with two photographers, John L. Dunmore and George Critcherson, Bradford relied on their images to create something akin to the images of the moon circulated by NASA 95 years later. The seal and the ship offer a reference to size and a reminder that humans are visitors in this extreme land.

Sandor Bodo, photographer and journalist

An American Idyll

April 6, 2007 - January 6, 2008

Alexis Rockman

June 17 - September 18, 2005

After Eden

April 26 - December 29, 1996

From the Reserve IV

July 22 - October 2, 1994

Romanticism and Revival

December 4, 1992 - June 26, 1993

The Ocean

August 17 - October 7, 1990

Arctic Sunset was inspired by Bradford's second voyage to the Arctic Circle in August of 869. With a staff of forty explorers, scientists, and photographers, Bradford braved below­ freezing temperatures and fields of ice hundreds of miles in extent to execute a large number of sketches and photographs which were later published as a book, The Arctic Regions, in 1873. The arctic sunlight in the midnight hours, the subject of this picture, was the most challenging subject because of the tremendous amount of reflected light glancing off the huge expanses of ice.

Selection VII

March 31 - May 8, 1977

To Look on Nature

February 3 - March 5, 1972

Days Gone By

July 1 - September 26, 1971

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Arctic Sunset with the accession number of 18.192. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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