Google Lens entry:

A three-masted ship is silhouetted against two towering icebergs, set within a ragged sheet of ice bounded by smaller floes. The horizontal expanse of the scene exaggerates the openness of the uncharted Arctic. A single ship among the icebergs became Bradford's best-known subject, and he painted from personal experiences and photographs of Arctic expeditions. He participated in several expeditions—opportunities he used to study nature, glaciers, and icebergs for later inclusion in his paintings.

On his expeditions in the Arctic, Bradford meticulously documented the region in photographs. Photography lent credibility to the artist's claims of truthful representation of nature, and professional photographers accompanied him on every expedition from 1863 onward. Bradford saw photography's potential to bridge the gap between art and science, and he became one of the first artists to champion—and heavily rely on—this new medium.

William Bradford (1823-1892) Scene in the Arctic, ca. 1880 Oil on canvas Gift of Agnes van Eck Reed 1991.39

William Bradford was one of several American artists who traveled to the Arctic at a time when the fascination with exploring exotic and uncharted territories was at its height. During seven voyages he accumulated numerous photographs, sketches, and studies, which he incorporated into paintings throughout his career.

Mr. Bradford sailed in a vessel . . . for the northeastern coast, going as high as the fifty-sixth degree. . . . For two weeks at one time, the vessel was frozen in a field of ice five or six hundred miles in extent, and so surrounded by it that it rose like a wall several feet above the traffail [high point of the ship]. It may be readily imagined that sketching out of doors in such a region, even in the middle of summer, with the thermometer in the neighborhood of thirty degrees Fahrenheit, was not a comfortable occupation, however exciting it might have been.

Henry Tuckerman, “Landscape Painters,” in Book of the Artists, American Artist Life (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1867)