Frederick Cook

Scalpel and pencil on white artfoil prepared with grey printers ink. Image 160 by 107, framed to 294 by 342mm. Glazed with perspex. Signed and dated,

A sensitive portrait of the man who might have reached the North Pole in 1908, by the man who definitely did in 1969.

 

Sir Wally Herbert (1934 - 2007) was lifelong veteran of both Arctic and Antarctic exploration, approaching both with a sense of adventure most often associated with the Heroic Age. He was also a keen artist for all his life. After quitting the Royal Engineers in Egypt he vagabonded his way across the Middle East and Mediterranean drawing portraits for board and lodgings. His exploration career took him first to the Antarctic with the New Zealand sledging expedition, and then north to the Arctic, where his efforts culminated in the 1969 trans-Arctic expedition which successfully crossed the icecap via the North Pole. 

 

In the 1980s Herbert was invited by the National Geographic Survey to consult Robert Peary's archive of records from his 1909 North Pole claim. Herbert found Peary's notebooks to be lacking essential data, and disputed the American explorer's long contested achievement in an article published in National Geographic, and then in a book-length work, The Noose of Laurels (1989). The present portrait was made by Herbert during the time when he was writing and researching this book, so the dramatic rivalry between Dr. Frederick A. Cook and Robert Peary would have been at the forefront of his mind. Though not as closely examined in Herbert's investigation, Cook's claim would have put him at the North Pole on 21st April 1908. Peary launched a vehement smear campaign against Cook in the American press, and his reputation never recovered. 

 

Herbert's British Trans-Arctic Expedition reached the North Pole on 6th April 1969, as part of their 3800 mile crossing of the icecap. 

Stock Code: 217114