After Icebergs with a Painter A Summer Voyage to Labrador and Around Newfoundland. — Reading Companion

A Painter's Quest for Icebergs

The narrative is driven by a specific artistic mission: to capture icebergs in paint. Noble notes that the painter, referred to as 'C——', found great difficulty in painting from the boat due to motion, yet the boat was the best vantage point, as men could 'take a position, and keep it by the help of oars' despite waves and currents. The excerpts reveal a focus on the challenges of representing icebergs—their colors, forms, and the fleeting light. Noble describes how the berg's surface melted into 'circular depressions about the depth and size of a large watch-crystal,' with angles falling into parallel and diagonal lines. The painter's struggle to render such details is a recurring thread.

The Iceberg's Colors and Light

Noble's descriptions of icebergs are precise and sensory. He observes that blue veins in the ice are 'much softer than the surrounding ice, melting faster,' forming channels where 'little torrents glitter as they run.' These veins, he infers, are cracks filled with water and frozen when the berg was a glacier, marking its original perpendicular. The most striking passages concern color: the berg at sunset is 'immersed in almost supernatural splendors,' with a white alpine peak rising from 'a field of delicate purple.' Colors flit 'from tint to tint' with a rapidity 'impossible to describe or paint,' passing through peach-blow, pink, and rose-red before softening into dove-colors. Noble likens the effect to the 'merry dancers' of the northern lights.

The Physicality of Ice

Beyond visual beauty, Noble emphasizes the tangible properties of iceberg ice. He recounts securing a piece of ice shaped like a moose antler: 'It was a match for three of us,' slipping back into the waves repeatedly. He declares it 'the hardest and the heaviest' and 'the most slippery of all ices,' feeling colder than summer ice. The surface of this horn melted into regular circular depressions, 'all cutting into each other with such regularity that their angles fall into lines parallel and diagonal.' Such details ground the sublime in physical experience, reminding the reader that icebergs are not just spectacles but massive, recalcitrant objects.

Voyage Structure and Coastal Life

The book's structure follows the voyage's stages: from Halifax to Sydney, Cape Breton, then to St. Johns, Newfoundland, and onward to Labrador. Chapters cover specific locations and encounters, such as 'The Ride to Torbay,' 'The Whales,' and 'The Fishing-barge.' Noble includes local figures like 'William Waterman, the fisherman' and describes fish-houses, flakes, and the processing of cod-liver oil. These sections ground the iceberg-focused narrative in the human and economic realities of the Newfoundland coast. The return journey through the Gulf of St. Lawrence and across Nova Scotia provides a contrasting conclusion, broadening the geographical scope beyond the ice fields.

Noble's account is best approached as a travel diary shaped by a painter's eye. The reader should expect vivid, moment-by-moment observations of icebergs—their colors, textures, and behavior—rather than a systematic scientific treatise. The narrative moves between the sublime and the mundane, from the painter's struggles with his medium to the practicalities of hiring boats and navigating coastal waters. Pay attention to the recurring tension between the desire to capture nature and its resistance to representation.

I keep thinking about that old voyage—how Noble watched the icebergs shift color from his bobbing boat, knowing he could never capture them fully. It felt like holding something vast and temporary. Reading The Padre Island Story — A Closer Reading brought that same quiet ache, a shoreline slipping away as you try to remember it.