Travelling exhibition; 16 Smart-X panels (70 x 100 x 0.5 cm, 3 landscape, 13 portrait), CZ-DE-EN captions/subtitles

NORTH POLE EXPEDITION is an exhibition of book illustrations and copies of paintings by Julius Payer, the greatest Arctic explorer from the Czech lands and the most famous painter of the polar landscapes in general. In 1876, his travelogue The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition in 1872–74, together with an outline of the second German North Pole Expedition in 1869–70 and the polar expedition in 1871, was published in Vienna. In 2019, a substantial part of the book was issued in a Czech translation called North Pole Expedition. The exhibition is based on the author’s illustrations from this book. To emphasize Payer’s artistic genius, the introductory panel is a reproduction of one of the four canvases of the so-called Franklin Polar Cycle. The painting, Starvation Cove, depicts the tragic end of Sir John Franklin’s polar expedition of 1845. Since 1964, one of the later versions of this work of art has been permanently exhibited at the lecture hall of the Institute of Geophysics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague. The painting Discovery of Wilczek Island and the heliogravure Never back! are stored in the depository of the Regional Museum in Teplice.

Julius Payer (1841–1915)

was born in Teplice-Šanov into a German-speaking family. He made many dangerous first ascents in the Tyrolean Alps and became an excellent topographer. In the years 1869–70 he took part in the German Arctic Expedition to the eastern shores of Greenland led by Karl Koldewey on the steamer Germania supported by the transport sailing ship Hansa. A month after departure, Germania encountered heavy ice that trapped her. Hansa was crushed by the accumulated ice. During the winter, Payer undertook sleigh tours along the coast, in the fjords, and on the mainland for geographic explorations, mapping, and nature studies. In 1871, together with Karl Weyprecht, he made a preliminary reconnaissance sailing in the Barents Sea on the sailboat Isbjørn, this time in an Austro-Hungarian expedition that aimed to explore the navigational possibilities of the planned scientific North Pole Expedition. In the years 1872–74, a private Austro-Hungarian expedition to the North Pole took place under the leadership of Julius Payer and Karl Weyprecht. The expedition ship “Admiral Tegetthoff” was permanently trapped in the ice four months after leaving, drifting uncontrollably in the Arctic Ocean by the force of winds and sea currents. In 1873, the crew discovered a new land, which they named Emperor Franz Josef Land in honor of the Austro-Hungarian monarch. After the second winter, the decimated members of the expedition set out on foot, sleighs and boats along the thawing sea to the south. They all escaped certain deaths of cold and hunger only after three months full of harsh Arctic experiences. In August 1874, they were rescued off the coast of Novaja Zemlja by the Russian fishing schooner Nikolai.

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