Why it matters
Two polar bears tear at the wreckage of Franklin's lost Arctic expedition: a telescope, a tattered Red Ensign, a sail and human bones. It shows civilisation defeated by 'nature, red in tooth and claw'.
Did you know?
- It was painted in 1864.
- It is the subject of an urban myth that it is haunted.
- William Michael Rossetti called the remains 'the saddest of membra disjecta'.
Based on the Wikipedia article Man Proposes, God Disposes (CC BY-SA 4.0).
