May 3

May 3 Episode #78: Cursed Art: Landseer's Man Proposes, God Disposes (Season 9, Episode 2)

In our ninth season, in a topic suggested by you, our listeners, we’re uncovering the backstory behind some of the world’s most famed “cursed” objects in art, architecture, and archaeology. Today, we’re continuing with a maddening, and potential murderous, painting by Edwin Landseer, deemed Man Proposes, God Disposes.

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Episode Credits:

Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Logo by Dave Rainey. Additional research and writing by Jordan McDonough.

ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.

Additional music credits:

Recommended Reading

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Links and further resources

The Conversation: The Haunted Painting of Fabled Franklin Ship Discovered in the Canadian Arctic

BBC: The Painting Reputed to Make Students Fail Exams

British Art Journal: Sir Edwin Landseer's "Man Proposes, God Disposes" and the Fate of Franklin

Hyperallergic: Slashed and Hidden from Sight: The Strange Power of Cursed Paintings

Painting of two polar bears in arctic landscape

Episode Transcript

Imagine yourself as a university student based in England, crossing the myriad pathways of your campus’s beautifully manicured landscape of 135 aces located just outside of London. Though your campus is indeed a sight to behold, with its red brick towers, white stone accents, and green quads, you’ve got little mind to stop and enjoy the sights today--in fact, you’re hurrying to find your way to the college’s Picture Gallery, the campus art repository that has occasionally been repurposed for end-of-term examinations. Just like any student might, you are probably experiencing a variety of understandable anxieties about your impending test, wondering, “Did I study hard enough? What score do I need to keep my top marks for the course?” That’s enough to send your stomach into knots, but you, a student at the Royal Holloway, now part of the University of London, has further reason to feel unease about your upcoming exam. Because in the Picture Gallery stands a painting long declared cursed, a canvas upon whom any number of maladies have been blamed-- nightmares. Many failed exams. Illness and madness. And, most extreme-- suicide. Your heartbeat quickens, your palms begin to sweat. Will this painting play upon your body and mind today?

Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. This season, season nine, is all about curses in art and archaeology, a topic that was suggested by you, our listeners. And today we’re continuing with a supremely chilling painting by an English master, and the urban legends, equally chilling, that surround it-- today, it’s Edwin Landseer’s Man Proposes, God Disposes. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.

The story behind Landseer’s eerie and cursed painting is an interesting one, stemming from the founding of the Royal Holloway College at the end of the 19th century. Royal Holloway was established by businessman and philanthropist Thomas Holloway in association with his wife Jane. Though he founded the campus in the late 1870s, the school wasn’t officially opened to the public until 1886, when none other than Queen Victoria sanctioned it as an all-women’s college- and one of the first places of higher education available to women during the Victorian era. And like practically every college-- especially of that time period-- it was deemed a necessity that the school begin its own art collection, one that would stand as both proof of the importance of the arts to the development of a well-rounded person, and as a signifier of the college’s wealth and ability to wheel and deal in both culture and commerce. Because of this, Thomas Holloway began to collect what he considered to be the finest of contemporary art as early as 1881, with an interest in purchasing works that would be of considerable interest for his female audience. And that determination makes his particular purchase here all the more interesting, because it doesn’t fit into any female-focused art collecting stereotypes and gender discrimination that we might opt to imagine. There are no sun-dappled Impressionism scenes here, no ladies in white dresses, no still lifes of exquisite flowers or fruit. Man Proposes, God Disposes is, instead, a sizable painting of an icy arctic landscape, all whites, grays, and blues, showcasing two fierce and ravenous polar bears, their fangs bared frighteningly. On the left, one of the bears savagely tears a crimson piece of fabric from a large wooden pole, assumed to be the fallen mast of a ship. That the bear struggles to pull the tattered and weather-worn sail is frightening for two reasons-- the first being that the color of the sail reads immediately like it is stained by blood, though it’s probably not. But it does remind us that bodily gore could have been a part of this scene, because what else other than a horrific accident would bring a shipwreck to the Arctic? On the other side of the fallen mast, the second polar bear is captured in the act of chewing on bones, his fangs equally bared and eyes closed in pleasure or pure primal focus. Beneath him more bones linger, and it’s almost immediately noticeable that the bones are indeed a human ribcage. And looking closely, there’s further evidence, though perhaps less gruesome, of a previous human presence. A brass scope, extended as if once in use, has been abandoned on the far left. Scraps of additional fabric, including a blue segment, reads like a uniform that once clad a very ill-fated man. Was he the former owner of that ribcage that’s now serving as the polar bear’s lunch? At any rate, there’s precious little here that isn’t cringe-worthy or even a bit terrifying to the casual viewer, which makes its purchase for Royal Holloway an interesting one. But more than that, the painting wasn’t a purely imagined scene meant to shock and awe-- it was, really, a reminder of an actual terrible occurrence that was only a few decades past: the ill-fated Franklin Expedition of 1845.

Chances are good that the phrase “The Franklin Expedition” would have immediately struck a member of the Victorian public with visions of Imperial heroism and awful tragedy-- a story of a group of enterprising men hoping to do good for their country but facing, instead, a terrible reality. It began, naturally, with good capitalistic intentions. John Franklin was an explorer whose expeditions aimed to benefit British merchants and expand the ease of trade between Great Britain and the rest of the world. During the mid-19th century, Great Britain was an international powerhouse, with a booming economy and worldwide reach. Still, this was a hundred years before air travel became inexpensive and common, and trade voyages between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were long and expensive. So John Franklin aimed to discover the long-rumored “Northwest Passage,” or the sea route that connects the Atlantic and Pacific and traverses the top of North America through the Arctic ocean. For centuries this had been a preoccupation for members of various European nations, and in the 19th century in particular-- that great age of discovery-- there was a huge push to officially claim a particular route. And John Franklin was going to make it happen. He was going to do it in the name of Queen Victoria and the honor of Great Britain. And by all accounts, he was going to be successful, because Franklin had everything going for him: a crew of 129 men, three years worth of supplies, and two top-of-the-line Royal Navy ships-- the Erebus, and the Terror, a ship whose name now seems strangely prescient. The Franklin crew had everything going for them, and so they set out on May 19, 1845, to much fanfare and hope.

Coming up next: things don’t go well for the Franklin expedition, and one British painter sows the seeds of nightmares. Stay with us.

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

By 1848, when the stores of the two ships would have run dry, the Franklin expedition had not returned to Britain, and no word was received of the ships. At this point, naturally some concerns were raised, and various search and rescue expeditions were sent out with hopes of locating Captain Franklin and his crew-- to no avail. With each passing year, hopes of any return of the Franklin team diminished further and further, until it was almost a surety that the members of the expedition had perished, but no details were ever determined. Until, that is, nearly ten years after the expedition’s departure. In 1854, a Scottish explorer named John Rae was undertaking his own explorations of the Arctic when he came across a community of Inuits who relayed a story about a party of Europeans who met an awful fate. Disturbed by the story, Rae also understood its importance, considering the then-unknown fate of the Franklin transport-- and he thus sent a report to the British Secretary of the Admiralty. In a long missive, Rae wrote, quote:

“In the spring, four winters past, a party of ‘white men,’ amounting to about forty, were seen traveling southward over the ice, and dragging a boat with them… None of the party could speak the Esquimaux language intelligibly, but by signs the party were made to understand that their ship, or ships, had been crushed by ice, and that they were now going to where they expected to find deer to shoot. From the appearance of the men, all of whom, except one officer, looked thin, they were then supposed to be getting short of provisions, and purchased a small seal from the natives. At a later date the same season, but previous to the breaking up of the ice, the bodies of some thirty persons were discovered on the Continent, and five on an island near it [...] Some of the bodies had been buried (probably those of the first victims of famine), some were in a tent or tents, others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, and several lay scattered about in different directions. Of those found on the island, one was supposed to have been an officer, as he had a telescope strapped over his shoulders, and his double barreled gun lay underneath him.

From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource--cannibalism--as a means of prolonging existence.” Unquote.

Though Rae didn’t come out and officially confirm that these “wretched countrymen” were the Franklin party, it was nevertheless that it was a pretty good guess that it was them. And when this news spread around England, it caused a huge outcry and gripped the public for months. How could such a promising, well-prepared, and well-funded expedition fail so spectacularly? How could men from one of the most powerful and civilized countries in the world succumb to something as monstrous as cannibalism? In this way, it mirrored the horrified response that the French had had only a couple decades prior, when the story of the atrocities that befell the French frigate, the Medusa, circulated across Europe. (More on that, and the painting by Géricault that it inspired, in ArtCurious episode #51). And as we’ve seen throughout history, this outrage is met by a true fascination, which means: tragedy, like sex, sells. The British public could not get enough of all things about the Franklin tragedy, especially with that cannibalism hook-- it’s the same thing that still piques our macabre interest when someone whispers “The Donner Party” to us Americans. This all-too-human obsessive streak led many prominent figures, including politicians, publishers, other explorers, and--of course-- artists to lean in hard to this tale and to capitalize upon it. Again, more Géricault vibes going on here.

Among those producing the most interesting work on the Franklin tragedy was Edwin Landseer, an artist who, at first glance, seems equally both an odd choice and the ideal candidate for a painting like Man Proposes, God Disposes. Landseer was born in London in 1802 and his father, a well-known engraver, took the boy under his artistic wing and recognized early on that young Edwin was a prodigy, with particular talent in painting animals. In many ways, he’s analogous to our much beloved artist and star of ArtCurious episode #64, Rosa Bonheur, an animalier who herself was known to some as the quote “French Landseer,” though really, I’m totally okay for our purposes in calling Landseer the “English Bonheur,” but that’s just me. It’s his animals that made Landseer a well-known and highly sought-after artist of his time, with some even referring to his canvases as “animal portraiture,” to describe just how much personality and charm he infused therein. He was hugely popular with those dog-loving Brits, and even Queen Victoria herself claimed him as one of her favorite artists and knighted him in 1850. And if you’ve visited London, you probably have seen Landseer’s works without potentially even realizing it: the four bronze lions that flank Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square are his iconic touches to an iconic monument. Many of Landseer’s animals are a touch anthropomorphized in that they are often described with human qualities of dignity, bravery, and the like, or they act as stand-ins for their human counterparts. If you really want to see a slightly sappy but otherwise just incredibly heartbreaking painting, just Google Landseer’s painting, The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner, and get the Kleenexes handy.

By the time that John Franklin and his team were departing on their unfortunate journey, Landseer, though still hugely popular, found himself facing some increasing difficulties. In 1840, he suffered what most historians believe to be a nervous breakdown, which was sparked by the death of his mother. Throughout the rest of his life, his mental health declined, and he experienced struggles with depression, addiction, and hypochondria, all of which doctors at the time attributed to, quote, “melancholia.” And as Landseer’s ailments increased, his artworks changed in tone from sentimental and charming and appealing to darker and more pessimistic. In particular, he was drawn to Darwinistic themes like the survival of the fittest, or the triumph of nature over mankind-- both which feature hugely in Man Proposes, God Disposes. Landseer went to great lengths to properly fill his painting with not only the most accurate details, but also the darkest ones, too. For the human bones and other remains, like the ripped cloth and the cast-aside scope, the artist gleaned details from the most popular book on the Franklin disaster, an infamous book by Francis McClintock called Voyage of the Fox in the Arctic Seas: in Search of Sir John Franklin and His Companions, from 1859. McClintock led an expedition to further in John Rae’s footsteps and to conclude that Franklin’s team were indeed those “wretched countrymen” that Rae had discovered in the Arctic, and to celebrate their honorable lives, all while noting the grisly details of the site of the team’s demise. Landseer mined McClintock’s tome for everything from the, quote, “ghastly hue” of the polar lighting, to the ravaged discovery of a skeleton. Taking it one step further, he studied polar bears in action at the London Zoo, and even wrote to a leading paleontologist named Sir Hugh Falconer for the loan of a polar bear skull in order to paint the animals as true to nature as possible. The result was one of the most disturbing paintings of his career-- a painting so shocking that Lady Franklin, John Franklin’s widow, was so horrified that she couldn’t even bear to look at the grim painting. Even the title itself is grim, its tidy internal rhymes notwithstanding: Men like John Franklin may have great plans, but we’re ultimately at the behest of fate, or God, or the whims of the Universe. Now, by no means was this a strange concept for art and literature in the 19th century, as it falls squarely into the category of Romanticism, which we discussed, again, previously in our Gericault episode. Romanticism was all about big emotions, grandeur and drama, and the supremacy of the natural world was a huge part of this movement throughout Europe, and certainly it played a big role in England at this time. But Landseer’s painting here doesn’t provide viewers with any kind of hope--nature has won here in the most appalling way, turning men first upon each other through violence and cannibalism, and then annihilating them entirely. All that’s left are these polar bears scavenging the remains of a once-lauded company of men. It’s not a work that memorializes and heroizes the members of the Franklin expedition-- instead, it blatantly highlights their failure to conquer nature and to live up to their anticipated goals. It’s a reminder of their brutal end. Landseer, too, had an unpleasant end, with his help failing and failing until he was declared insane in 1872. He died the year later, in 1873, at the age of 71.

Almost two decades after the completion of Man Proposes, God Disposes, it went up for auction in London, which is where Thomas Holloway, the founder of Royal Holloway, came upon it. Like Landseer before him, and really, like most people in London in the 19th century, he had been enthralled with the good-expedition-gone-wrong tale of John Franklin and his men. It meant something to him--enough that after his death, it was discovered that he had squirrelled away piles of newspaper clippings about the Franklin disaster. Whether or not this was due to more than human interest, we don’t know for sure-- but we do know that such interest inspired him to purchase the Landseer work at that auction in 1881 for the price of 6,615 British Pounds, which, by the way, was the highest sum ever paid for the purchase of a contemporary work of art at auction in London at that time-- so, shout out to our last season on art auctions, everyone). He had it installed at the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway, and as Laura MacCulloch, the current curator at Royal Holloway notes, its inclusion in the college’s art collection does make some kind of sense, though perhaps not at first glance. Thomas Holloway, remember, was trying to set up his brand-new women’s college as a place for minds to grow, to expand, a place for the debate and understanding of all of society’s issues. Landseer’s frightening painting could be a catalyst for a good many topics of conversation: man’s connection, or disconnection, to nature; ideas of fate or religion; of environmental factors and any number of scientific experiments; even, perhaps, whether such expeditions were important, or necessary. Surely that was Thomas Holloway’s hope. But one wonders if it ever inspired much debate, for the first half-century of its display, other than about whether or not it was cursed.

Laura MacCulloch notes that almost immediately after Man Proposes, God Disposes ended up in the Picture Gallery, reports began to spread of headaches, nightmares, and, you know, just general feelings of doom. At end-of-term exams, students were disturbed by the beady eyes of the fierce polar bears, and several indicated that the painting affected them so much that they attributed any poor grades or failed courses to its presence. Every year, a new class of students--which included both men and women after the Second World War-- found reason to fear Man Proposes, God Disposes. But as the legend holds, things only grew more dire, and depending on what version of the story that you hear, they reached a breaking point in either the 1920s, the 30s, or the 1970s. And please be warned that we’re about to get gruesome here. According to college lore, a man was seated next to the painting, as many had over the years, to take his final exams. During his test, he couldn’t help but look over, again and again, at the macabre painting next to him. The bear’s teeth bared, their black eyes glinted, the tongue of one lolling against a cracked rib in that desolate white space filled with wreckage. And in that instant, spurred on by academic pressure and the painting’s curse, the man was driven insane, and in his fit of madness, he took his sharpened pencil and stabbed himself through the eye-- deep enough, the legend says, that he never made it out of the testing hall alive. And just in case it wasn’t clear why the man committed this horrendous act, he left behind a very telling note to elucidate matters. Scrawled on his unfinished test were seven eerie words: quote, “The polar bears made me do it.” Unquote.

The tale of the cursed Edwin Landseer painting at Royal Holloway is a strange and fascinating one, but I must confess that, like the other curses we’ve been discussing this season, it’s probably nothing more than conjecture-- a great urban legend carried down from student to student over the college’s storied history, a way to titillate incoming freshmen, perhaps, and inculcate them in the community via story. We connect to one another via the stories we share-- regardless of whether or not they might actually be true, and it’s thus probably not surprising that there are no records to indicate that anyone committed suicide within the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway, or even that anyone has ever scrawled an ominous warning about the painting on their final exam. Naturally the fact that the timeline has seemed to change over time adds that level of incredulity--because the suicide either happened in the

20s, or the 30s, or the 70s, or who knows? Maybe someone will claim to have the inside scoop on the event, which really happened during the 1990s. But what’s most interesting is that even though chances are spectacularly good that this is all a fascinating myth, Royal Holloway isn’t taking any chances. Ever since the 1970s, a new tradition has taken hold: during exam times, Man Proposes, God Disposes is always covered up, typically with a Union Jack, the national flag of the United Kingdom, which was the only thing large enough to cover the painting at that time. That way, those beady polar bear eyes will not glower over the students. It’s the one thing we can truly verify about the Landseer painting-- its power today, perhaps, lies not in being cursed, but in its capacity as a holder of superstition and story.

Coming up net time, it’s an episode I almost wrote back in the 1st season of ArtCurious, about one of the most majestic--and avoided-- palaces in Venice. Does it have a sordid past? And why do big-name buyers like Woody Allen chicken out from purchasing it? We’ll get into it in two weeks. Don’t miss it.

Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Jordan McDonough. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Our audio production services are provided by Kaboonki, the silliest name in superb podcasts and video. Let them help you too at kaboonki.com. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.

The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator. For more details about our show, including the image mentioned in this episode today, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod. And we have podcast merchandise! You can support or show that way and get yourself some goodies, like t-shirts, tote bags, notebooks, and more. Check out the link to our TeePublic store in the show notes on this episode, or on our website.

Check back with us in two weeks when we explore the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful with potentially cursed art and artifacts.