Landing the Shore End of the Atlantic Cable
Hauling the land end of the 1866 transatlantic telegraph cable ashore on the Irish coast, a record by Dudley, who sailed aboard the cable-laying ship. Full commentary ↓
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Landing the Shore End of the Atlantic Cable is an oil painting by Robert Charles Dudley (1866) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It measures 57.2 × 83.8 cm.
In the pictureOn a beach beneath rocky cliffs, people stand in a line, shouldering a thick rope that comes up out of the sea and hauling it in. The line runs past small boats strung out on the water all the way to a steamship on the horizon. On the rocks at the left, onlookers sit watching, and the sky is overcast.
BackgroundIn the summer of 1866, the Great Eastern, then the largest ship in the world, succeeded in laying a telegraph cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. The event cut the time it took news to travel between Europe and North America from ten days by ship to a matter of minutes. Robert Dudley sailed aboard the ship as its artist and painted the entire operation; this picture shows the land end of the cable being brought ashore on the west coast of Ireland. The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns several works from the same series.
Puzzle tipSky and sea make up half the picture, so the pieces look much alike. Completing the diagonal formed by the line of people and the cable first divides the picture into upper and lower halves and makes the rest easier. Distinguish the brown pieces of the cliff at the left by the grain of the rock, and the sky by differences in the brightness of the clouds.
- Artist
- British, 1826–1909
- Classification
- Paintings
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 57.2 x 83.8 cm
- Credit line
- Gift of Cyrus W. Field, 1892
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
Stories about this work
- Dudley's Six Paintings of the 1866 Atlantic Cable, Made Aboard Ship
In 1866 the largest ship in the world laid a telegraph cable across the Atlantic. We read, in order, the six paintings left by an artist who sailed on the voyage.
- Why Forest Puzzles Are So Hard, and How to Choose a Landscape Painting
Landscapes with a wide sky and landscapes packed with forest are hard for different reasons. How to find reference points for each type, and how to pick a good first landscape.
