Heemskerck and Barents Planning their Second Expedition to the Far North

In the 19th century the Dutch loved the story of Willem Barents and Jacob van Heemskerck, whose crew spent the winter of 1596 to 1597 stranded on Nova Zembla, the Arctic islands north of Russia, in a hut built of driftwood. That winter was the scene everyone knew. In 1862 Bisschop chose an earlier and quieter moment, the two men indoors planning their second voyage north, the one of 1595, which the ice turned back. They sit in a study with a globe, a model ship and a map of the Arctic, and with them is the skin of a polar bear brought home from an earlier voyage. The Rijksmuseum bought the painting in 2017 and hangs it among its Dutch Romantic pictures.