Explore the Background about the Description of this artwork, Man Proposes, God Disposes.
The painting depicts an imagined Arctic scene in the aftermath of Sir John Franklin's expedition in 1845 to explore the Northwest Passage.
The 134 men of Franklin's expedition left Greenhithe in May 1845 on two steam-powered ironclad icebreakers, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.  After five left the ship, the remaining 129 men were last seen by a whaling vessel in Lancaster Sound in July 1845, but then disappeared without trace into the ice.  The expedition was well-provisioned for a voyage of several years, but eventually, search parties were sent out as time passed and  no further sightings were made.  In 1854, Inuit recounted tales of sightings in 1850 to Captain John Rae of the Hudson's Bay Company, and he found some dead bodies on King William Island.  Rae also reported suspicions of cannibalism among the last survivors.
In 1859, Francis Leopold McClintock published The Voyage of the Fox in the Arctic Seas, an account of his voyage on the Fox in search of Franklin from 1857 to 1859, and his discovery of the remains of two crew from Erebus on King William Island earlier in 1859, together with the ship's boat and other detritus.
The painting may also have been inspired by Caspar David Friedrich's 1824 painting The Sea of Ice, and Frederic Edwin Church's The Icebergs, which was first exhibited in New York in 1861 and shown in London in 1863.
John Rae Hudson's Bay Company Frederic Edwin Church Greenhithe Leopold McClintock expedition in 1845 Lancaster Sound The Sea of Ice Francis Leopold McClintock Inuit Caspar David Friedrich Arctic Northwest Passage cannibalism The Icebergs London King William Island John Franklin