Sold for: $91,250

PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Katharine Lochnan, editor, Black Ice: David Blackwood, Prints of Newfoundland, Art Gallery of Ontario, 2011, pages 6 and 9

In his work, David Blackwood has chronicled the life of Newfoundlanders and their relationship to the sea in striking images that have imprinted themselves indelibly on our consciousness. As Farley Mowat wrote, men in ships such as this “sallied out...to fling the primordial challenge back to those unyielding elementals—the roaring sea; the mad and bitter gales...the green, destroying ice.” Blackwood’s subject, the Neptune II, was a three-masted schooner built in 1920 and owned by Captain Job Kean Barbour, a merchant from Newtown. The Barbour family was one of the greatest seafaring families of Newfoundland, and Barbour was the subject of Blackwood’s 1979 etching Captain Job Barbour Dreams. Under full sail, the Neptune II is a stunning sight, with flags flying and its sails bright red from soaking in a traditional preservative made by boiling the bark of conifers. Blackwood contrasted the ship against a glowing light field with light rays also radiating in front of it. Reddish wisps of cloud swirling above the ship create a tremendous sense of atmosphere, and the iceberg in the distance reminds us of Newfoundland’s proximity to “Iceberg Alley,” the cold current flowing from Labrador that brings floating icebergs from the arctic.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars