A Cavern beneath the Coastal Ice Cliffs.

£42,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

One of the finest images from the Heroic Age, demonstrating Hurley’s complete command of the medium . This example was previously in the collection of expedition leader, Douglas Mawson. Frank Hurley (1885-1962) started life as a photographer at the age of seventeen, and held his first exhibition in 1910. “He was particularly interested in pictorialism - the notion that photographs could express ideas, tell stories and excite emotions in much the same way as paintings” (Howgego). As soon as the position of photographer was advertised, Hurley applied immediately to join Mawson’s expedition. Of course, hundreds had applied. However, over the course of an impromptu train journey he managed to convince him. It was on “the basis of his work with Mawson [that] he was recommended to Shackleton’s expedition of 1914, during which he took the famous photographs of the sinking of the Endurance . He was renowned for going to any length to obtain precisely the image he wanted ” (ibid). A depiction of surgeon Leslie Whetter on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914. This photograph is reproduced in Mawson’s official account Home of the Blizzard (London, 1915), with the caption “On the frozen sea in a cavern eaten out by the waves under the coastal ice-cliffs.” The New Zealand born Whetter (1888-1955) studied medicine at the University of Otago and was one of eighteen men chosen by Mawson to stay with him on the Main Base, while another seven were sent under Frank Wild’s command of

• Year: 1914

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