£4,000 - £8,000
WILLIAM BURN MURDOCH RCA FRSE (SCOTTISH 1862-1939)
THE LAST CARTRIDGE
Oil on canvas, 109 x 141cm (43 x 55.5")
Provenance: The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland
Note: Edinburgh-born Burn Murdoch was one of few artists (with William Walls and Charles Mackie) involved in the founding of the Zoological Society of Scotland. The painting is likely to have been a fictionalised encounter between a polar bear and a whaler c1900, and the title alludes to the 'adventure fiction' so popular at the time. Burn Murdoch himself joined his friend Dr William Speirs Bruce on the Dundee Whaling Expedition to Antarctica in 1892, on the vessel Balaena. This voyage allowed him to make pictures for his book 'Edinburgh to the Antarctic', and later 'Modern Whaling and Polar Bear Hunting' in 1917. The artist was instrumental in the capture (with a sedative dart) of 'Starboard', the second polar bear to enter Edinburgh Zoo in 1913.
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