Icebergs
June or July 1859
Frederic Edwin Church captured the chilling majesty of the Arctic in this moody, panoramic seascape, painted just after his adventurous 1859 voyage to Newfoundland. The dark, churning waves in the foreground create a dramatic contrast with the distant, glowing iceberg, which seems to float like a ghostly castle in the hazy, pinkish sky. A tiny, almost imperceptible ship on the left horizon emphasizes the sheer, terrifying scale of nature—a classic hallmark of the Romantic movement. Church was so obsessed with these frozen giants that he later turned this study into a massive, blockbuster exhibition piece that had New Yorkers paying fifty cents just to see it in a dark room!
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