2-888-402 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Burford's Panorama of the Polar Regions - The "Investigator" Snow-Walled in for Winter, 1850. Sailors at Port Leopold, Canada, building an ice wall '...constructed of blocks of snow...cut and shaped by cutlasses and shovels; they were cut of a size, so as to enable two men to lift and place them in a proper position...the point in the distance is North-east Cape and its beacon; the right-hand horizon glows with the splendour of an Aurora Borealis...[with] parties of the voyagers in the foreground, who are trapping white foxes...Mr. Burford's Panoramic Views are painted in the finest oil-colour and varnish...with wonderful power and intensity of effect, characteristic of the supernatural aspects of the Polar Regions...'. HMS Investigator was abandoned in 1853 after becoming trapped in pack ice, during the search for Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.