1823 -1892 · New England, Labrador and Arctic exploration

Translucent icebergs, tiny ships and polar horizons make William Bradford the great American witness to the Arctic in the 19th century.

William Bradford was born in 1823 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and died in New York in 1892. Raised in a Quaker family, he first worked in commerce before the failure of his business prompted him to devote himself entirely to painting. Essentially self-taught, he opened a workshop near the ports of Fairhaven and New Bedford and produced portraits of ships for shipowners and seafaring families. His collaboration with the Dutch painter Albert van Beest deepened his sense of the sea, movement and rigging. His collaboration with the Dutch painter Albert van Beest deepened his sense of the sea, movement and rigging. His collaboration with the Dutch painter Albert van Beest deepened his sense of the sea, movement and rigging. His collaboration with the Dutch painter Albert van Beest deepened his sense of the sea, movement and rigging. From 1861, Bradford undertook several expeditions to Labrador, Newfoundland and Greenland. Bradford began several expeditions to Labrador, Newfoundland and Greenland. From 1861, Bradford undertook several expeditions to Labrador, Newfoundland and Greenland. The Arctic was not a setting for him imaginary: he draws on site, observes the structure of the ice, notes their colors and studies the way in which boats, men and animals pass through this extreme environment. During his 1869 trip aboard the Panther, he took photographers John Dunmore and George Critcherson. Sketches and photographs then feed large canvases painted in his New York studio and his work The Arctic Regions, published in 1873. An Arctic Summer: Piercing the Ice Sheet in Melville Bay contrasts the effort of the ship with the luminous expanse of ice. Off the coast of Greenland and Waiting for the Thaw show the whalers caught between trade, exploration and natural threat. Bradford accurately renders hulls and rigging, but his real invention lies in the color of the iceberg: blue, green, purple, gray and saffron transform the ice floe into an architecture of light. Exhibited in London and at the Royal Academy, commissioned by Queen Victoria, he also stayed in California. His work combines documentary precision, luminist grandeur and acute awareness of human fragility in the face of the polar world. The "William Bradford" selection notably compares An Arctic Summer: Piercing the Ice Sheet in Melville Bay and Waiting for the Thaw. His reading favors figures.

Bradford measures man by ice: the ship remains precise, but the luminous immensity of the Arctic still retains the last word.