John Everett MillaisBritish, 1829–1896The North-West Passage
Can I see it?
Unknown
Where is “The North-West Passage” now? Collection: The National Gallery, London. Unknown.
London, United Kingdom
The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
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.
Read on
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."
Details
- Accession number
- NG1509
In the catalog
Sources
- Wikidata
- Image: The National Gallery — John Everett Millais · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
![Study of a Pottery Jug [recto], John Everett Millais, c. 1842](https://api.nga.gov/iiif/bd3617b6-ebda-468c-9b54-142851ab029e/full/!2400,2400/0/default.jpg)
