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William Bradford was, by the late 1850s, a marine
painter of considerable reputation, and in the 1860s, had
embarked on a number of voyages researching mate-
rial for future paintings. Six voyages along the coast
of Labrador in the early 1860s had provided him with
much useful material, and had triggered and enthusiasm
for further, longer and more challenging journeys. His
1869 journey north of the Arctic Circle on board the
steam-assisted sailing barque Panther was planned to
give him material on which to base several years of
work back in his New York studio, and took him as far
as Melville Bay on Greenland’s west coast.
The group left Boston on June 13th, travelling on-
wards from New York two days later. By that time, one
of Dunmore’s chests of chemicals had already been
smashed and replaced. Arriving in Halifax Nova Scotia
on the 19th, Dunmore found his woes were not at an
end—two cases containing one hundred glass plates
had been broken, and he spent some time sourcing new
sheets of glass. With the help of distinguished local
Halifax photographer, William Chase, the new plates
were albumenised and repacked ready for the journey
to Greenland. The steamer Panther arrived a few days
later and Dunmore supervised the construction of a fi f-
teen by six foot ‘dark-closet’ on board before the party
left on 3rd July.
Along the way, in St John’s, Newfoundland,
Dunmore took ‘twenty-fi ve to thirty views of the
beautiful scenery thereabouts.’ Arriving in Greenland,
the fi rst photographs were taken at Cape Desolation
and Julianshaab—where he photographed the local
governor and his family, and ‘some views of the
Esquimaux huts.’
But it was once they had travelled further north
to the Glaciers that the fi nest images were produced.
Considerably aided by the highly refl ective snow and
ice, Dunmore was able to produce perfectly exposed
14 × 18 plates with an exposure time of only two sec-
onds—a combination of image size and exposure which
is remarkable. He also refers to taking photographs
of bears on the ice fl ows and taking ‘two very good
negatives of them from the topgallant forecastle’ of the
Panther—a camera position which would not tolerate
long exposures. The crew wished to shoot the animals
immediately, but Dunmore persuaded them ‘to let me
shoot fi rst with the camera.’
From his account of the journey, a picture of his
choice of process emerges. At the outset he talks of albu-
menizing his plates in Nova Scotia before embarking on
the Panther—suggesting the use of a collodio-albumen
dry plate—but at the site of a huge glacier, he refers to
the wave created by ice falling into the sea ‘which sent
the water up twenty feet all over us, and washed away
collodion, developing glass, green baize, etc., and came
very near to taking us along with it.’ That suggests
that, in addition to dry plates, he was also coating wet
plates while on location—a practice as diffi cult in the
Arctic cold as it was for other travellers in the heat of
the Egyptian desert.
The party left Greenland for the last time on Septem-
ber 16th and returned to America.
Dunmore returned to work at Black’s studio, while
Bradford went to work on his paintings, and Dunmore’s
name next appears in the media 7th March 1870 issue
of the Philadelphia Photographer, under the heading
‘Sad Accident.’DUNMORE, JOHN L. AND GEORGE P. CRITCHERSON
Dunmore and Critcherson. Hunting by
steam in Melville Bay, the party after
a day’s sport killing six Polar bears
within twenty-four hours.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The J. Paul Getty Museum.