L'uomo propone, Dio dispone

In 1845 the explorer Sir John Franklin sailed north with two ships and 129 men to find a passage through the Arctic ice, and none of them came back. For years Britain sent search parties, and the country followed each grim discovery. Landseer painted this in 1864, while relics were still being found, and he imagined the end nobody had witnessed. Two polar bears pull at the wreckage, one gnawing a human ribcage, another tearing a tattered red ensign, a broken telescope and a mast scattered on the ice. There are students at Royal Holloway who will not sit near it during exams, and the college covers it with a flag while they write. The painting hangs where it has for well over a century, its bears still working over the bones.