Dr. John Rae

Every few months -- partly due to Ken McGoogan's book and John Walker's film -- I hear afresh about the injustice done to Dr. John Rae, the man officially credited with first "ascertaining the fate" of Sir John Franklin and his men. Today, my Google alerts drew my attention to a lovely blog that goes by the name of Shambles Manor, where a fresh tribute to Dr. Rae has been posted. It seems it may well be time to set the record straight, the more so as -- these days at least -- there seems to be little room in the "blogosphere" for any nuanced differences of opinion.

So let me be quite frank and direct: I feel that Dr. John Rae is one of the greatest explorers ever to travel the eastern Arctic, and a man of absolutely unquestionable integrity. That he is not given greater credit for his actions, and the testimony he brought home to the Admiralty, is a lasting stain upon that institution, and represents a loss to the integrity of British Arctic exploration history. Dr. Rae deserves far greater laurels than he has generally been given, and by the by, his birthplace ought to be restored and deserves to be a Scottish, as well as a British, national landmark.

But that said: Dr. Rae did not "discover" the Northwest Passage. He himself would never have made such a claim. He did indeed map a stretch of water -- the "Rae Strait" as it is justly named in his honour -- which constituted the last unmapped bit of the particular "Northwest Passage" as it was navigated many decades later by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Sir John Franklin, believing in the maps of (that other most notable Scot) James Clark Ross, did not believe that there was a Passage through this area, and indeed had he tried to take his enormous "bomb" vessels that way, they would have certainly run aground (Amundsen's Gjøa, which drew less than 1/3 the amount of water of Franklin's ex-warships, did run aground, and had to jettison much cargo in order to make it through). Anyone who wishes to consult the historical record in this regard can readily do so -- Dr. Rae's own writings, and Amundsen's, describe this bit of territory quite ably.

Ken McGoogan feels that, since Rae mapped this section, he ought to be acclaimed the "discoverer" of the Passage. But this neglects two hard facts: 1) There is more than one Passage, depending on ice conditions and what sort of ship one has -- the Rae/Amundsen section is but one option among many; and 2) What was called for in terms of the Northwest Passage in the nineteenth century was not its "discovery" but its "navigation" -- one had to pass through it. McClure had a sort of claim to this, though part of his passage was on foot, and he was only able to complete it thanks to the help of other crews of other vessels; Amundsen had, and has, an indisputable claim. Other ships -- most notably the "Manhattan" in 1969 -- plowed their way through without taking this route, traversing ice that would have been utterly impassible to Franklin or any other nineteenth-century voyager.

Mr Carmichael, the MP for Orkney and Shetland, has in the past expressed his desire to have any memorials to Franklin -- such as that at Westminster Abbey -- removed in favor of Rae. But this would not serve justice; Rae himself was always effusive in his praise and empathy for Franklin and his men, and he never made such a claim in his life. There is no contradiction in honoring Franklin and Rae -- indeed, there is only a history of mutual regard, and enormous achievement on the part of both men in the face of danger. Let us honor Dr. Rae more -- and yet let us honor Sir John Franklin no less. I would gladly support the addition of a memorial to Dr. Rae at Westminster, but the idea of carting off the existing one to Franklin makes no sense.

CBC: Finding Franklin group challenges search permit refusal

According to a story today on the CBC's website, Rob Rondeau and his ProCom Diving Services are challenging the denial of an archaeological permit by the Government of Nunavut:

The Nunavut government has come under fire for denying an archeological permit to a privately-funded group that wants to search for Sir John Franklin's missing ships in the High Arctic. Members of the Finding Franklin Expedition said the reasons they were denied a Class 1 archeological permit by the territorial government do not make sense. "It's extremely important, I think, on a global scale to Canada, to Great Britain, that the wrecks be found," Rob Field, one of the lead archeologists in the expedition group, told CBC News.

You can read the rest of the story here at the CBC's site. The gist is that Rondeau's group feel that they did consult with local Inuit, having spoken with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, who put them in touch with Inuit in Taloyoak where they had hoped to hire a couple of local guides. They also say that they have plenty of underwater experience, even if most of it has not been in the Arctic, and feel that the territorial Justice minister was unnecessarily harsh in sending a letter threatening their arrest.Rob Field, an archaeologist working with Rondeau's group, is quoted as saying that he's not sure why it is so difficult to obtain permission to simply do a "no touch" search for the wrecks of Erebus and Terror. He says that he hopes to speak with Julie Ross, the Nunavut government archaeologist who was involved in the review of ProCom's permit application

Not looking for Franklin's ships this year

(click here for the full article)

According to several stories which have appeared on the CBC's website, Rob Rondeau is not looking for Franklin this year:

One of the leaders of a private search for Sir John Franklin's lost ships in the Northwest Passage denies he was planning to look for the vessels this year. The Nunavut government threatened Rob Rondeau of ProCom Diving Services and his team with criminal charges if they searched for the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror without an archeological permit.

Rondeau received a letter to that effect from the territorial Justice Department last week while he was in the hamlet of Taloyoak. Nunavut government archeologist Julie Ross said Rondeau's team was trying to launch a search for the ships — which have been missing in the High Arctic passage for more than 160 years — even though the group had been denied a territorial archeological permit this year ...

It's difficult, at this point, to say how much of this story reflects the Government's own desire to keep its mission pre-eminent, or how much is due to political resistance on the part of Nunavut authorities. Since the establishment of Nunavut, many researchers say it's been more difficult to get archaeological and other permits; while the requirement that local Inuit communities be consulted is certainly understandable, it can add costs and delays. I've talked with Dave Woodman about this, and he's certainly had a few frustrating experiences with "officialdom" up there. That said, it certainly would be most unfortunate if Rondeau's team had indeed -- as some reports suggest -- attempted to skirt the proper processes in order to do a quick, unpermitted search.

Chauncey Loomis, 1930-2009

I was saddened yesterday, on looking at the table of contents for the latest issue of Arctic, to come upon an obituary notice for Chauncey Loomis. I'd known he was ill, but the last few e-mails I'd had from him were as lively and irascible as ever. From a man who would often be away on fishing trips to such far-flung places as Tierra del Fuego, an absence of a few months seemed unremarkable; just last summer, he'd told me of a trip to New Brunswick, where, by his own account, he had enjoyed "the best salmon fishing I've ever had in almost 40 years of fishing for the creatures." It's especially strange in this electronic age, when e-mails remain in one's in-box, the "reply" button clearly visible -- to suddenly discover that no reply will ever be possible again.

The obituary notice in Arctic, written by Loomis's longtime friend Constance Martin, struck all the right notes. Still, in the sudden realization of his passing, I couldn't help but be struck by how much my work owed to his, and wondering how many people today are aware of it. It wasn't his delightful book on Charles Francis Hall, Weird and Tragic Shores, which I first stumbled on, but rather his essay "The Arctic Sublime," published in 1977 in the anthology Nature and the Victorian Imagination. This single essay, with the illustrations and color plates (!) that Loomis managed to have printed with it, was in many ways the spur for all of my work on the Arctic in Victorian painting, illustration, and photography. Many of its images, such as Friedrich's Das Eismeer, William Westall's engraving, after Beechey, of the Hecla and Griper at Melville Island (I never did find out where Loomis had found his lovely blue tinted version) , and of course Sir Edwin Landseer's "Man Proposes, God Disposes" have remained central to my work from that moment. While Loomis was certainly correct in his famous apothegm that "The Sublime cannot be mapped," his writing surely served as a map of all the places I would need to go in pursuing my own researches into the Arctic and visual culture. It was also a welcome sign that an English professor could cross over old disciplinary boundaries, and do so with verve and style.

Loomis could be bold -- but he was also, when he felt it right, cautious. Despite his discovery of arsenic in tissue samples taken, at his behest on an expedition he'd organized, from the grave of Charles Francis Hall, he refused to jump to the conclusion that Hall had been murdered, or say who was to blame, without more than what he considered, at best, circumstantial evidence. In that case, I once thought he was a bit too cautious, but having had the experience of seeing a few of my own bold conclusions founder upon the sands of presupposition, I see his views in a somewhat different light. When it came to the important things -- bringing a character such as Hall to vivid life -- there was no one better than Loomis. The Hall papers offer a daunting cart-load of contradictions, the remains of a life he never lived to set in order; that Loomis was able from such jumbled materials the narrative he did is an exemplary work of humane scholarship, and a book which to this day my students find among the most readable and engaging on my list of texts. Weird and Tragic Shores has been re-issued by the Modern Library, although I've found that, year to year, it seems to go in and out of stock at the publisher's. If for some reason any of you who are reading these words have not read it, you owe it to yourself to obtain a copy, and head directly to a comfy chair to read it. It is a book which, as Cervantes once said of Tirant lo Blanc, deserves to be kept in print forever.

A second photograph of Harry Goodsir

One of the more unusual categories for early sitters for the Daguerreian camera is monophotic, meaning persons for whom there exists only a single photograph. It's possible, as some have speculated, that Beard's apparatus, used to photograph the Franklin expedition's officers, was used to make two of every subject -- but so far, we only have a second image for two of them: Fitzjames and Des Voeux. We can now add a third sitter for whom this was not to be his only surviving photograph: Henry Duncan Spens ("Harry") Goodsir .

The photo has survived in the collections of the University of St. Andrews, and is labelled "1842 Dr. Harry Goodsir." It's a remarkable photograph, not only for the very different pose struck by Goodsir, but by this date. The Talbotype (later, calotype) process had only been invented two years earlier by Henry Fox Talbot; aside from those he made himself, only a handful of photographs made prior to 1843 by this process survive to the present day. That a portrait of Goodsir is among them is not, however, merely a matter of good fortune.

The Goodsirs were an illustrious scientific family; Goodsir's eldest brother, John Goodsir, was the foremost British anatomist of his era. In 1843, only a year after this image was taken, Harry Goodsir assumed the post of Consevator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh (a post earlier held by both his elder brothers). There had been considerable interest in the College, as well as at the University of Edinburgh, in the possible scientific applications of photography. The daguerreotype, in theory at least, was unavailable due to patent restrictions, but Talbot's calotype process was restricted only in England, not Scotland. And, as it happened, it was to be David Brewster, principal of St Leonard and St Salvator College at St. Andrew's University, who first brought the calotype to Scotland. Brewster was an expert in optics and spectroscopy, and among other things was the inventor of the kaleidoscope; he had corresponded extensively with Talbot, and may indeed have been the man to persuade him to permit free use of his invention in Scotland.

Under Brewster's influence, Robert Adamson, working with David Octavius Hill, opened the first portrait studio in Scotland in Edinburgh in May of 1843. As this Goodsir image precedes their establishment by at least several months, it's tempting to think that it may have been made directly under Brewster's tutelage, or even by him. There may, indeed, be still other photographs of Goodsir; I have heard rumors of a group portrait in which he is included, and with the spirit of experimentation then in the air, it would not be surprising if there were still others. Indeed, I think it very likely that Goodsir -- who was given a naval commission explicitly to serve as the Franklin expedition's naturalist -- was the officer in whose charge the Dageurreotype apparatus was placed. After all , in 1845, very few men, in or out of the Navy, could have claimed three or more years' experience with the newfangled science of "sun pictures."

Railway Engines at the Bottom of the Sea

Following up on an earlier post, since the area chosen for this year's summer search is where the first, crushed ship of Franklin's may lie, the question of how to locate and identify a submerged railway engine takes on new significance. As noted in my earlier post, railway expert Dr. Michael Bailey took the lead in the historical work for this expedition; I've since located a few resources on the 'net that add something to his account. I wish that the National Railway Museum would put something more detailed online! Nevertheless, their exhibition page, along with this article from the BBC News, give some sense of the immense logistical challenges. Happily, the channel where Franklin's vessel may be found is free from the very high currents that made this project so difficult.

The vessel, the "Thomas," a 700-ton barque, had sailed in 1857, just a dozen years after Franklin, headed for Nova Scotia. She didn't make it far, foundering in the Hebrides and taking her cargo of railway engines to the bottom of the channel. But what type of engines were they? Initial research seemed to indicate that they were small service engines. Yet the engines found were not the engines expected, which gave a lesson in the ability of above-ground archaelogical work solving an underwater mystery. As Bailey recalled,

"Initial research indicated that the Thomas had been carrying two small saddle tank engines packed in kit form by the manufacturers, Neilson & Co of Glasgow. But when the divers found a 5 ft driving wheel, we knew that couldn't be right."

Eventually the engines were identified as 4-4-0 broad gauge tenders, specially built for a Canadian railroad. Since the engines had just left the factory, historians were able to discover much about their original manufacture, as (unlike similar engines remaining in use) they were not modified in any way. In the case of Franklin's engines, the differences in their configuration and type, according to Dr. Bailey, are significant enough that if one is found, and its working parts are at all visible to the remote cameras, it should be possible to say which engine -- and thus which ship -- met its fate at that place.

Where to search for Franklin's ships?

With the news that the private search for Franklin's ships will be the only one this summer, the practical question of where to look for Franklin's ships is re-opened. Robert Grenier had planned to search in the vicinity of the Royal Geographical Society Islands, but apparently Rob Rondeau and his team plan to look much further north, in the vicinity of Larsen sound, scanning an area south of where the ships were reported abandoned in the "Victory Point" record of 1848. But what are the odds that something will be found there? The map above, which I obtained some years ago from Ice Services Canada, shows the mean surface water currents throughout the Canadian Arctic. If you look at the area in question, you'll see two currents -- one hugging the shores of King William Island and tending to the north and northeast, and another, heading south and southwest along the coast of Victoria Island. The ice, of course, is subject to other forces than current, and generally flows south/southwest through the channel, though younger ice along the coast of KWI can often follow the contrary current northward.

If we assume that one of Franklin's ships was crushed not far from the original abandonment, the debris from this wreck could then go in either direction. Material embedded in the ice would have tended south, while material caught in the current way well have scattered to the north. Only a heavy object -- such as the ship's modified railway engine -- would be likely to plummet to the bottom at the site of the sinking. Yet whether one ship was crushed at this point is debatable; there are clear accounts by Inuit eyewitnesses to the sinking of one ship, and as David Woodman points out, this must have happened later, and further south than the abandonment, as the Inuit almost never visited the northwest quadrant of King William Island -- a fact corroborated by the clear evidence that the large cache of materials near Victory Point was not disturbed by Inuit until after they heard about it from white men. The crushing of one ship, then, may well have occurred much further south, and indeed the RGS Islands are a likely site, as the ice floes here, compressed by the narrowing channels, are turned into a jumbled, upended mouthful of teeth that could easily masticate any matter sent through them.

We do, as it happens, have some material evidence of where debris might end up -- when Dr. John Rae was on Victoria Island, he discovered several large pieces of wood, parts of which were painted a distinctive yellow color used by the Royal Navy, which he only belatedly realized must have come from the "Erebus" or "Terror." Such a find, if it came from a crushed ship, strongly suggests that the vessel was nearer the Victoria than the King William shore, as otherwise the surface ice would not have brought it within Rae's sight.

One last tale -- and a more terrifying one it is than any of the ship's slow crushing -- is that one or both of Franklin's ships was trapped in an iceberg and carried out to sea. This idea, long championed by my good friend Joe O'Farrell, is based on accounts by passengers on ships far to the east, who saw, or seemed to see, an iceberg pass by in which were embedded two stranded ships. Such a tale might be easily dismissed, were it not for cases such as that of HMS "Resolute," which drifted, unpiloted, along the same general route as this iceberg would have had to take, ending up in the Davis Straits. If indeed this story holds any (frozen) water, then Franklin's ships would be far off in the North Atlantic somewhere -- perhaps even near where the Titanic kept its much later date with an iceberg.

There remain many Inuit tales of a ship, apparently deliberately anchored in relatively shallow water, with a boarding plank lowered and some sweepings or debris from the deck on the ice nearby. These stories are detailed and vivid, and were repeated with nearly all the same details to Schwatka in the 1870's and Rasmussen in the 1920's. It is this ship -- the "Ootjoolik" wreck -- which David Woodman has searched for so patiently, as it is far more likely to be at least partially intact. Outside of the channels of the scouring ice, it may well be in a state of preservation approaching that of the "Breadalbane" near Beechey Island, which vessel was found with its sails still hanging from upright masts.

Franklin Search Called off for 2009

According to the CBC, this summer's search for Sir John Franklin's ships has been officially called off. Apparently, despite the much-vaunted announcement of Harper's government last year that a three-year mission had been authorized, neither the Canadian Navy nor its Coast Guard could be persuaded to give priority to this project. To my mind, it's a sad and regrettable occasion when a government proves unable to persuade either its Navy or Coast Guard to effect its own stated plans and policies, and especially so here -- the news makes it sound as though the ministers in charge of these agencies have more to say about the matter than the Premier - and seems to suggest that affairs in Ottawa are "disjoint and out of frame" as one King of Denmark once said.

On the other hand, as Jonathan Karpoff has argued, there is something to be said that, treated overall, Government-funded expeditions have fared poorly compared with private ones. So many limbs of the octopus must be marshaled together for a Government expedition, and there is such complication in its internecine conflicts, that it acts too slowly, and corrects too late, much like the helmsman of the Titanic seeking to avert an iceberg. Whereas, the story goes, private expeditions can respond with alacrity to changed circumstances, and go where the going is good rather than being tethered to some three (or five) year plan.

Nevertheless, it's surely true that the more resources from any quarter that can be brought to the search, the better. The area to be searched is so large, and the resources needed even to reach it are so substantial, that both public and private searches are needed in order to maximize the odds of eventual success. This year, Rob Rondeau is hoping to get the support and permits needed to do dives of his own, while earlier searches of private persons, particularly those of David C. Woodman, have created a crucial framework upon which all such future work depends. No matter who (if anyone) claims the prize, their laurels will be in part due to the perseverance of those who searched before. I certainly wish all those who undertake such a venture, now or in future years, the best.

Landseer Lecture

I just arrived back late last night from my lecture on Sir Edwin Landseer's "Man Proposes, God Disposes," currently on display at the Yale Center for British Art. It was well-attended, and the audience was wonderfully diverse in every sense -- in age, in background, in interests, in expertise. I was especially delighted that my partner Karen Carr and my daughter Caeli were there, along with my dear friends Mary Cappello and Jean Walton (thanks, Jean, for the photo!). This painting, along with the rest of the Royal Holloway's touring collection, has been expertly hung and lighted, and has never looked better. It's also worthy of note that the frames, which were originally all glazed and made with specially-designed latches for removing and cleaning the glass, are now hung almost entirely unglazed, which offers a view long unavailable in their original home. Landseer's carnivorous canvas finally gets its due.

There is an enduring anxiety about these bears, one which was the subject of several questions after my lecture. One person in attendance, an alumna of Royal Holloway, offered her recollection that the painting was hung with a Union Jack -- reversed -- during exams, as though the mirror image would better defeat the harmful rays of the naval ensign in the painting. She vividly recounted the anxiety of those who sat near. What horror still exuded from them nearly 150 years after they were painted? I offered my own view that the bears, in all their muscular horror, were more or less stand-ins for fears of cannibalism.

And yet whether or not these bears were simply representatives of animal appetite -- or else subconscious representatives of the upgorged horror of the "last resource" was a matter of debate. Scott Wilcox, the YCBA's curator of graphic arts and an expert on panoramas, asked whether the bears might not offer the relief of resolution -- after all, if 'the bears did it,' then there was no further need to probe the scene in search of something far worse. Ultimately, many present felt that the bears could be both a potential guard against far worse images, and an embodiment of the very fear thus allayed -- and I heartily agreed with this view.

But why not judge for yourselves? This magnificent show runs through July 26th, and New Haven is an easy day-trip for anyone in the greater New York or greater Boston areas. These paintings, as a collection, will not travel again soon, and you may be surprised to find that even the most difficult to please of museum goers -- children -- will at once be drawn to Landseer's portrait of these astonishing creatures, and will be led by them through the rest of a gallery filled with an abundance of Victorian riches.

The Franklin Daguerreotypes III

It's remarkable how little it turns out we sometimes know about things we thought we knew well. So, while the question over whether or not Richard Beard made two original sets in 1845 is debated at William Battersby's blog, I'd like to continue the series here on the history and meaning of the images we do have.  I've included in this posting an image of the entire set of 14 images, as they are mounted in the collection of the Derbyshire County Archives in Matlock.  It's a version seldom seen, but one that recalls the significance of the event as a whole, and collectively reiterates the strange and ghostly qualities of these images -- the first and last any of the subjects would sit for -- of the officers aboard Franklin's ships.

What can we say about this quality?  In his seminal study Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes recalls the uncanny sensation he had when gazing at a different Beard daguerreotype:

"One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852.  And I realized then, with an amazement that I have not been able to lessen since: 'I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.'  Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but no one seemed to share it, or even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude)."

It is that odd solitude -- the awareness that every photograph is both oddly living -- preserving the gaze of the subject in a way that almost seems, wizard-like, to peer back at you out of its frame -- and yet announcing, without even having to say so, the ultimate mortality of us all -- that makes the Franklin daguerreotypes especially rich.  Every one of them is a window, and a tombstone.

Which makes, I suppose, the mounting at Matlock a sort of cemetery, ranked in rows.  The order differs from that used by the engraver for the Illustrated London News, so I am skeptical that the mounting was done for their use.  It has the look of something assembled by a patient, diligent, but (in modern terms) untrained archivist, one who wished very much to gather, preserve, and state the significance of these images. "Sailed from England 19th May 1845 in Search of the North-West Passage" -- the inscription seems to suggest they still sail, and will always.  For how can they be "lost" when, before our eyes, we have them right here?

So what more do we see?  I invite readers to post their own responses here.  I'd be interested in further thoughts on Franklin, Gore, or any other of the men.  What do we see in them, and what do they reveal in us?

Man Proposes, God Disposes

One of the iconic images of the Arctic Sublime, it was painted by an artist who had never travelled to the north, and whose best-known paintings were of royal dogs and ponies -- Sir Edwin Landseer -- in the strange twilight of his career. When in 1981 it was shown in the United States as part of a Landseer retrospective, New York Times art citic Hilton Kramer singled it out as the most stunning of his works, comparing it with other darkest moments of the Victorian age:

"'Man Proposes, God Disposes'" is Landseer’s 'Dover Beach' and with that painting, at least, he joins the ranks of those disabused Victorian prophets whom we still have ample reason to admire and heed."

As one of the gems of the Royal Holloway Collection at the University of London, it's part of a touring show set up to allow renovations to its original quarters; from now through July 26th this magnificent, unparalleled collection of Victorian art can be seen at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. On June 25th, I'll be giving a gallery talk on Landseer's painting from 12:30 to 1 p.m.

So how did such a seemingly staid and sober artist such as Landseer, who, though renowned for his animal subjects, had always remained with the lines of domestic propriety, come to paint such a monstrous scene? In 1864, McClintock's news of the demise of Sir John Franklin's expedition was still fresh in the air, as was the controversy, ignited ten years earlier, over Dr. John Rae's evidence of cannibalism among Franklin's men. Such dark matter was inconceivable as the subject for a serious painting -- since Géricault's famous "Raft of the Medusa" (1818-1819) tastes, shall we say, were greatly changed. Maritime tragedies were meant to be seen through a spyglass dimly, distantly awesome and only alluded to by natural features; the storms of human malfeasance could cloud horizons but not confront the viewer's eye. Frederic Edwin Church had struck just the right tone three years earlier with his "Icebergs," which contained a lone, broken mast as a synecdoche of Franklin's tragic end: man made mast.

There's a mast in Landseer's painting too, with tattered remnants of a royal ensign clinging to its side -- but it's what comes before the mast that astounds. Two polar bears, their muzzles rippling with carniverous delight, are sitting down to a feast of dead explorers' bones. The bear on the right tosses a bone from a human ribcage, while on the left a second bear rips at the ensign. At that bear's side lie a broken telescope and lens-cap, its shattered state a metaphor of the blasted vision of the dead. When the painting was first shown in 1864, there could be no doubt of its intended subject. The Times spoke of "bones -- no need to ask whose," while the reviewer for the Illustrated London News was more impressionistic:

"Under the lurid sky of Arctic twilight, among the vast fantastic blocks of ice, green, or of livid pallor, save where faintly flushed with the long, level, rosy ray of the far-off dawn, we see over a hollow a solitary spar; and on the brink of this strange and awful grave -- for those are human ribs protruding, blanched and bare from summer heat or birds of prey."

Many felt it was in poor taste, and some of Landseer's private friends associated it with his increasingly difficult struggle with nervous anxiety. For much of the time before this painting, Landseer had been laboring, long and patiently, on the sculpted lions for the base of Nelson's Pillar in Trafalgar Square. The commission had used so much of his artistic and life-force that he was driven to nightmares, in one of which the lion pinned him to the ground, about to make a man-sized meal of him. Nevertheless, Landseer labored on, and perhaps in "Man proposes" found an outlet for this sense of being warily, wearily pursued by enormously powerful and relentless beasts.

Purchased some years later by Thomas Holloway, the British patent-medicine magnate, it took up a place of honor, as well as of anxeity, in the Picture Gallery in the Founder's Building of the Royal Holloway College. When the hall was used at term time for examinations, students were averse to sitting near it, so much so that it became a tradition for the porters to cover it with a cloth beforehand. And, curiously, it was in this same building that Anne Keenleyside, the forensic pathologist who first confirmed evidence of cannibalism from the bones recovered from NgLj-2 on King William Island, spent a postdoctoral fellowship, passing the hall on her way to and from her research without ever realizing how her work, and Landseer's strange vision, connected.

There are many other reasons to see the Royal Holloway -- Frith's Railway Station and Millais's "Princes in the Tower" among them -- but I would urge anyone who has the opportunity to see the Landseer. These bears do not often travel abroad, and there is nothing quite so chilling as seeing them there before you, only a few animal paces from your heart.