Survivors Discovered, 1971
Etching and aquatint
13 × 20 in. (33 × 50.8 cm) [Plate]
Numbered 6 of 25
This work is presently on view at our Toronto gallery
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Exhibitions
Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Ontario Circulating Exhibition, [dates not documented], no. [not documented], exhibited as Survivors Discovered.Literature
Farley Mowat, Wake of the Great Sealers (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 96-97. [reproduced].
William Gough, “Icefields” in The Art of David Blackwood (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1988), plate 12, unpaginated [reproduced]
William Gough, David Blackwood: Master Print Maker (Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2001), 147. [reproduced].
David Blackwood’s Survivors Discovered (1971) depicts a moment of recognition, when a lost sealing crew is discovered stranded in the North Atlantic pack ice off Newfoundland. The small group of stranded men appears from the vast expanse of pale ice, while the dark mass of a vessel occupies the right foreground, its crew gesturing toward them. Blackwood has composed the perspective from the vessel, looking upon the group of survivors who are signalling with their hands in the air, their ice flag raised above them. The tight gathering of stranded figures, created in grey and occupying a relatively small space on the sheet, along with the tattered flag become crucial visual signals, emphasizing how easily human life could disappear within the scale and harshness of the ice.
Survivors Discovered belongs to Blackwood’s celebrated Lost Party series, a body of work inspired by the 1914 S.S. Newfoundland sealing disaster and expanded into a broader meditation on the danger, loss and endurance that characterized life in Newfoundland’s small outport communities. Here, the eventual discovery of the exhausted survivors after two nights on the ice becomes emblematic of a culture in which extreme weather, isolation and sudden catastrophe were persistent realities. By the time they were found, many of the survivors were near death - frostbitten, exhausted, disoriented and barely able to walk. Seventy-eight of those who went out on the ice perished in the disaster.
The print’s technical qualities reinforce this meaning. Blackwood’s combination of etching and aquatint contrasts the sharply defined, dark linear detail of the ship and its crew with the softer, atmospheric expanses of ice and sky. Particularly striking is his use of areas largely free of ink, allowing the paper itself to evoke the texture, glare and emptiness of the ice. Survivors Discovered was issued in an edition of only 25 numbered impressions (plus proofs), a notably small edition for Blackwood; many of his other major prints were issued in editions of 50 or more, making this comparatively scarce.
Survivors Discovered belongs to Blackwood’s celebrated Lost Party series, a body of work inspired by the 1914 S.S. Newfoundland sealing disaster and expanded into a broader meditation on the danger, loss and endurance that characterized life in Newfoundland’s small outport communities. Here, the eventual discovery of the exhausted survivors after two nights on the ice becomes emblematic of a culture in which extreme weather, isolation and sudden catastrophe were persistent realities. By the time they were found, many of the survivors were near death - frostbitten, exhausted, disoriented and barely able to walk. Seventy-eight of those who went out on the ice perished in the disaster.
The print’s technical qualities reinforce this meaning. Blackwood’s combination of etching and aquatint contrasts the sharply defined, dark linear detail of the ship and its crew with the softer, atmospheric expanses of ice and sky. Particularly striking is his use of areas largely free of ink, allowing the paper itself to evoke the texture, glare and emptiness of the ice. Survivors Discovered was issued in an edition of only 25 numbered impressions (plus proofs), a notably small edition for Blackwood; many of his other major prints were issued in editions of 50 or more, making this comparatively scarce.
