The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece

$20.00 at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Twelve days after the onset of the American Civil War in April of 1861, Frederic Edwin Church, the most successful American landscape painter of his day, debuted his latest "Great Picture" painting titled The North. Despite favorable reviews, the painting failed to find a buyer. Faced with this unexpected setback, Church added a broken mast to the foreground and changed the work's title to The Icebergs. He then shipped the painting to London, where it was finally sold to an English railroad magnate and…