The Sea of Ice

1823–24

Oil on canvas, 96.7 × 126.9 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

Slabs of broken ice pile up into a jagged pyramid under a pale sky. The museum reads the clearing at the top as a hint of hope, or of something beyond this world.

Once called The Wreck of Hope, a name taken from a ship in a lost earlier version.
Look at the right: the dark hull of a crushed ship lies tipped on its side, half swallowed by the ice.
Built up from three small oil sketches of ice breaking up on the Elbe in winter 1820–21, all now in Hamburg.
Nature's force overwhelms human effort, and the ice is heaped up like a monument. The museum names William Edward Parry's Arctic voyages as a possible source and notes readings from religious to political.
Acquired by the Kunsthalle in 1905, the same year as one of the ice sketches.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)