Lot 53: Frank Wilbert Stokes (1858-1955)

Frank Wilbert Stokes (1858-1955)
Colossal Berg, Greenland
oil on canvas
30 x 34in. (76.2 x 86.3cm.)

The Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; sale, Christie's, 18 Apr. 2000, lot 127.

Stokes was employed by Scribner's magazine to accompany the Peary Relief Expedition to Greenland in 1892. Stokes spent eight weeks in the Arctic, the first painter to work on the icefield where he had to learn a method as he went, mixing kerosene into his pigments to stop them from freezing and sketching outdoors through indistinguishable Arctic days and nights. His pictures from both Peary's 1891-2 and 1893-4 North Greenland expeditions were exhibited at the Brooklyn Institute Museum.