John Everett MillaisVereinigtes Königreich, 1829–1896

The North-West Passage

1874 · Painting · 176.5 × 222.2 cm

Darf man es sehen?

Unbekannt

National Gallery

London, Vereinigtes Königreich

Der Besitzer ist bekannt; ob das Werk derzeit ausgestellt ist, nicht.

Unverändert seit: 29. Sept. 2026
Quelle: Das Museum

Auf der Karte Museumsseite

Über das Gemälde

The North-West Passage is an 1874 painting by John Everett Millais. It depicts an elderly sailor sitting in an 18th-century armchair at a desk, with his daughter seated in a stool beside him. He stares out at the viewer, while she reads from a log-book. On the desk is a large chart depicting complex passageways between incompletely charted arctic islands.

Outside the window on the left, on sea, is a boat sailing to the left; on the wall over the desk is a painting of a ship trapped in ice, its bow pointing to the right. On the wall behind the seaman, right over his head, is an etching, depicting a young naval officer.

Millais exhibited the painting with the subtitle "It might be done and England should do it", a line imagined to be spoken by the aged sailor. The title and subtitle refer to the repeated failure of British expeditions to find the Northwest Passage, a navigable passageway around the north of the American continent. These expeditions "became synonymous with failure, adversity and death, with men and ships battling against hopeless odds in a frozen wilderness."

Wikipedia CC BY-SA