Cape Chudleigh, Coast of Labrador 1893, reworked 1895

Jenner presented Cape Chudleigh, Coast of Labrador 1895 to the National Queensland Art Gallery for its founding collection. The location of this forbidding seascape is the northernmost cape of Labrador, Canada. Jenner explained in his letter of gift (April 1895) that the work concerned a search party, led by Sir Edward Belcher, sent to find the ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin. Franklin’s two ships, the Terror and the Erebus, were last sighted by whalers on 28 July 1845 in Baffin Bay, just north of Cape Chudleigh.

Sir Belcher’s 1852 expedition was abandoned in 1854 after four of his five ships became icebound. He and most of his crew returned to England on the last ship, the North Star. Groups of birds (their species an ongoing mystery) are seen in the lower portion of the painting, dwarfed by the inhospitable icy terrain that ultimately defeated both expeditions.