Polar Exploration: an interesting early 20th century oil on canvas

Polar Exploration: an interesting early 20th century oil on canvas,
'Fram', a Norwegian icebreaker, the three-masted steam sailship depicted amidst pack ice, traces of inscription lower left and verso, 17.5" x 25.75", (44.5cm x 65.5cm), in gilt frame, sold with photocopied 1988 sale particulars.

Provenance: purchased Sotheby's Marine Sale, Wednesday June 1st 1988 lot 299. where annotated "Fram belonged to Nansen and was loaned to Amundsen for the expedition to Antarctica on which he reached the Pole on 14th December 1911".

Fram ('Forward' in Norwegian) was a wooden exploration ship built in the early 1890s by Colin Archer for Fridtiof Nansen's 1893 Arctic expedition, where Nansen planned to freeze the ship into pack ice and float it over the North Pole. It was decommissioned in 1912 and is preserved in its own museum in Oslo, as the wooden ship which has sailed furthest North and South in history.