Iceberg in Cartwright's Bight, Southwest from Battle Harbor, Canada

Frederic Edwin Church's oil sketch captures a massive iceberg floating off the Labrador coast, its sculptural form dominating the composition. The jagged peak at left contrasts sharply with the flattened, cliff-edged right profile. Church's economical brushwork—cream and white pigments for the ice, dark strokes defining the water and sky—demonstrates the rapid study technique he employed during his 1859 voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador. The painting exemplifies nineteenth-century landscape art's engagement with sublime natural phenomena and remote territories, while revealing Church's keen observational method for capturing atmospheric and geological specificity.