Museum catalogue: Polar Art Collection

Floeberg Beach and the polar sea, looking north from the crest of Cape Rawson, July, 1876


Accession no.:	Y: 54/13/4/1
Title:	Floeberg Beach and the polar sea, looking north from the crest of Cape Rawson, July, 1876
Description:	One of a set of 16 chromolithographs, based on the work of Staff Surgeon Edward Lawton Moss, R.N. of H.M.S. Alert during the British Arctic Expedition of 1875-76. 'Where Robeson Channel opens out into the Polar Sea, the cliffs of Grant Land give place to a more shelving shore. This sketch, made late in July, 1876, and looking due north across the winter quarters of HMS Alert at Floeberg Beach, shows the poleward prospect from the last of the cliffs. The coast-line curves away to the west into Black Cliff Bay, then turns north, and ends in the peaked mountains of Cape Joseph Henry, the point from which the northern sledge-parties started. Patches of melting snow, under Cairn Hill on the left, and under the slaty crest in the foreground (where some pink saxifrage is still in flower), send rivulets across the mud-flats to the South Ravine, and help to flood the green one-season ice between the grounded edge of the perennial pack and the shore. The floes are mapped out by hedges of hummocks, and look deceptively smooth from this height' - Extract from 'Shores of the Polar Sea'.
Medium:	Print
Artist:	Moss, Edward Lawton
Note:	Published in 1878 by Marcus Ward, London.
Dimensions:	Image: Width: 280mm; height: 195mm Sheet: Width: 480mm; height: 330mm