Masters of Puzzle - The Icebergs by F. E. Church

This is the second puzzle box in the puzzle collection based on the classical painter Frederic Edwin Church*. The Icebergs was inspired by his 1859 voyage to the North Atlantic around Newfoundland and Labrador. Considered one of Church's "Great Pictures", the painting depicts one or more icebergs in the afternoon light of the Arctic. It was first displayed in New York City in 1861, where visitors paid 25 cents' admittance to the one-painting show. Similar exhibitions in Boston and London followed. The unconventional landscape of ice, water, and sky generally drew praise, but the American Civil War, which began the same year, lessened critical and popular interest in New York City's cultural events.


The painting is one of the Church's composite views, like his popular the Heart of the Andes, in which he combined elements from many sketches with his imagination to convey the essential character of the setting. This approach to landscape painting accorded with the ideas of his aesthetic influences: Alexander von Humboldt, the popular naturalist and science writer who devoted a section of his Kosmos to landscape art; and John Ruskin, the famous English art critic. Church's particular challenge was to produce a grand landscape painting of an environment so limited in form, color, and living things. As the American art historian Gerald L. Carr writes, "By standards of its day, the composition was virtually abstract. Much was left to the imagination.

Content Details

Contains one new puzzle box for Masters of Puzzle. The UHD image captures the original painting in great detail which in turn allows for very detailed and diverse puzzle tiles. The large areas of the ice, as well as sky and ocean, will make assembling this puzzle a difficult task. There are a couple of sections - the cannon and the ice cave - that will give you good starting anchors. All in all, this puzzle box will represent medium to high challenge for most puzzle builders.


* Note: The painting used in this DLC is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less.