An early portrait of icebergs
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The first known oil painting of Antarctica, hidden for more than two centuries under a tropical picture painted on Captain Cook’s second voyage of southern discovery, went on display to the public in London Tuesday.
The iceberg picture was revealed by X-rays and is being shown only as a photograph, to avoid destroying the overpainted scene of Pickersgill Harbour in New Zealand.
It’s one in a show of 80 works by long-forgotten English artist William Hodges. The exhibition, at London’s National Maritime Museum, is the first public showing of his collected works since 1795.
Hodges, the son of a London blacksmith, was 28 when he joined Cook’s second expedition in 1772 in search of the southern continent.
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