American painter William Bradford is known as one of the first American artists to see the Arctic firsthand.
His romanticist paintings depicted sweeping, colorful skies with ships leaning against crashing waves and massive vistas which included some of the earliest reproductions of icebergs in painting. Accompanying him on some of his journeys were photographers from the J.W. Black photography firm, to document the scenes for posterity.
Images seen below from an 1864 trip off the coast of Labrador in Canada by J.W Black photographer William H. Pierce could be some of the earliest ever photographs taken of icebergs. While Bradford’s painting have been shown around the world and are even included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, these rarely seen photographs, available from the Library on Congress, showcase the basis of his paintings and some of the first glimpses of the frozen north.
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