
Rhyanon Demery
Head of Sale
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Head of Sale

Senior Specialist
Provenance
Ray Livingston Murphy, USA (according to label affixed to frame).
With Spink, London, no. K3 9230.
Private collection, UK.
Dr Edward Adrian Wilson was surgeon, ornithologist and artist on the 1901-04 Discovery Expedition, officially titled the British National Antarctic Expedition, led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott. It is on this famed expedition that this watercolour was completed.
Wilson would go on to accompany Scott on the ill-fated 1910-12 Terra-Nova Expedition. After having been narrowly beaten to the South Pole by Norwegian Roald Amundsen, a party of five would embark on their journey to the safety of Cape Evans. Exhausted and running low on food, the party ran into severely adverse weather. Petty Officer Edgar Evans died from a suspected head injury, whilst Captain Lawrence Oates, having succumbed to severe frostbite and gangrene, walked out of their tent in a brave effort to save the crew. Totally depleted of supplies and energy, it is in this tent, along with Scott and Henry Robertson Bowers, that Wilson would die.
Wilson was greatly admired among his party and Scott wrote of him in one of his final diary entries: 'Words must always fail me when I talk of Bill Wilson. I believe he really is the finest character I ever met.'