Item #6760 Camp Clay Cape Sabine Rescue of Lieut. (now General) A. W. Greely and Party. Moses P. Rice, photog., artist Albert Operti.
Camp Clay Cape Sabine Rescue of Lieut. (now General) A. W. Greely and Party.

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Rice, Moses P., photog.; Albert Operti, artist.

Camp Clay Cape Sabine Rescue of Lieut. (now General) A. W. Greely and Party.

Washington D.C.: Rice, photo., 20 July 1885. Albumen print, 9.25” x 16.25”, on paperboard mount; mount size, 17.5” x 21.75”. Manuscript annotations on the mount below the image, with loss to a portion of mount and inscription at lower left.

A rare proof photograph of an official painting depicting the rescue of the surviving members of the Greely Expedition, inscribed by the artist to a U.S. Senator. The annotation in the lower margin reads: “Artist proof photograph from the original oil painting (3 x 5 feet). Camp Clay, Cape Sabine. Rescue of Lieut. (now General) A. W. Greely and Party, Sunday night June 22d 1884 at 11 O’clock…officers and men of the United States Navy… To the Hon. W. M. Evarts United States Senator, with great regard and respect of Albert Operti artist.”

This image shows the rescue of members of Adolphus W. Greely’s ill-fated and grueling Lady Franklin Bay expedition. In 1881, Greely led a 25-man U.S. Army expedition to the Arctic, establishing Fort Conger, a scientific observation compound, at Lady Franklin Bay. Following a season of meteorological and tidal observations, the party retreated southwest to Cape Sabine, where they were to rendezvous with a relief expedition. However, heavy ice prevented the relief ship from reaching the Cape, with the same thing occurring the following year. A rescue ship did not arrive until June 1884. Only Greely and six other men would survive—the rest perished from starvation, drowning, hypothermia and even an execution Greely himself ordered. The seven survivors returned home as heroes, but accusations of cannibalism soon followed; Greely denied any knowledge of such activities. While the expedition turned into a disaster, Greely’s party nevertheless reached farther north than any known previous Arctic expedition, made important scientific observations, and undertook extensive mapping of the then-mostly unknown northern parts of Greenland. Operti’s painting of the rescue was undertaken with the assistance of three of the surviving members of the expedition: First Lieutenant Adolphus Greely, Sergeant David L. Brainard, and Private Henry Biederbick.

Born in Italy, artist Albert L. Operti (1852–1927) trained in the United Kingdom and immigrated to the U.S. in the later nineteenth century. A painter, sculptor, and illustrator, he worked as a scenic artist for the Metropolitan Opera and painted dioramas for the American Museum of Natural History. Operti also took a lively interest in Arctic exploration and created a number of paintings depicting important incidents and scenes in Arctic history, as well as portraits of Arctic explorers. He served as the official artist for Robert E. Peary during his 1896 and 1897 Arctic expeditions, creating paintings and drawings, and also making plaster casts of the Inuit for the Museum of Natural History.

Photographer Moses P. Rice (1839-1925) was born in Canada and immigrated to the U.S. In 1865, he and his younger brother Amos I. Rice (1850-1912) established a photo studio in Washington, D.C. Rice’s name is most closely associated with Alexander Gardner’s so-called Gettysburg portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Rice somehow obtained a copyright for the image (some believe that he worked for Gardner for a time), copies of which he printed into the 1920s.

Born in Boston, William M. Evarts (1818–1901) was a lawyer and statesman from New York who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York.

REFERENCES: Stein, Glenn M. “An Arctic Execution: Private Charles B. Henry of the United States Lady Franklin Bay Expedition 1881—84.” Arctic, December 2011, Vol. 64, No. 4, pp. 399-412; Wamsley, D. “Albert L. Operti: Chronicler of Arctic exploration” (2016). Polar Record, 52(3), 276-293.

PROVENANCE: U. S. Senator William M. Evarts.

CONDITION: Losses to lower edge of mount partly affecting inscription; breaks in right edge of mount; no breaks or losses to the image.

Item #6760

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