Resources on Art

Several years ago Lynne and I visited the Dallas Museum of Fine Art. On display was landscape painter Fredric Church’s majestic “The Icebergs” (64” x 112”), which depicts a scene from the painter’s voyage off the coast of Labrador in the mid-19th century. I was struck by the story of thousands of New Yorkers, like modern moviegoers, standing in line at its debut. They paid to see it. The narrator explained that few, if any, of the viewers had ever seen an iceberg. There were no photographs, perhaps not even other paintings of icebergs. So, the visual experience was novel. Look at the picture. The broken mast was a later addition, added to give the painting perspective. Interestingly, the broken mast – a symbol of…