Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819-1822

Arctic Artist is the liveliest and most complete account of Sir John Franklin's tragic first Arctic land expedition. George Back's prose captures the drama of this journey, and his superb watercolour sketches reveal the beauty and wonder of this northern land. Back's journal completes Stuart Houston's trilogy of the journals of Franklin's officers, and is particularly valuable because it is the only journal that records the entire expedition; Franklin himself relied on it for his own published account of the journey. Houston provides an introduction and extensive annotations, as well as synopses of the frank comments regarding the expedition recorded in the various journals of the Hudson's Bay fur trade posts. I.S. MacLaren's commentary on Back's paintings reveals a naval officer of exceptional talent. Conversant with the artistic conventions and aesthetic temper of his age, Back used his sketchbooks not only to depict the expedition's progress but also to capture his imaginative response to the northern wilderness. MacLaren also edits and comments on two other documents written by Back during the expedition: a candid letter to his brother and a poem dramatizing the disaster that claimed the lives of eleven of the twenty explorers in Franklin's party.