‘I couldn’t believe it was there’
In a dingy hut at the bottom of the Earth, stuffed between mouldy papers stuck together with grime, was a lost treasure: a delicate watercolour that looked brand new.
The painting remained undiscovered in Antarctica’s oldest building for 118 years, hidden amongst rusted cans, faded newspapers and thick layers of penguin poo.
The painting was in almost perfect condition, unaffected by time and some of the planet’s harshest conditions.
The painting depicts a Treecreeper, a small, portly bird found in the forests of the northern hemisphere. It was named for the way it climbs trees by hopping up their trunk.
The painting was discovered by conservators from the Antarctic Heritage Trust, who for nearly two years have been sifting through artefacts from two huts at Cape Adare, a windswept peninsula in northeast Antarctica.
The huts were the first permanent structures placed on the continent, used for an 1899 British expedition led by Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink.
They are in the midst of the world’s largest Adelie penguin colony.
The huts are being restored, so around 1500 artefacts inside were brought to Christchurch, where they are painstakingly cleaned and catalogued.
The discovery came late last year, in the midst of an argument – the conservators were debating how to classify the stack of blank, mouldy papers.
Thinking there was nothing inside the mouldy papers, conservator Josefin Bergmark-Jimenez opened them.
‘‘I was so surprised when I saw it I just slammed the whole thing shut again and stepped away. It was one of those things where you look at something and you can’t quite believe your eyes that it’s there.’’
At first, the painting was a mystery. It was not signed, and apart from its title – 1899 Tree Creeper and the initial ‘‘T’’ – gave no hints as to its origin.
The artist was narrowed to being a member of one of two expeditions – Borchgrevink’s group which built the huts, or Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed 1911 expedition to the South Pole.
The answer came soon afterwards. Bergmark-Jimenez went to a University of Canterbury lecture about Dr Edward Wilson, a scientist who was Scott’s right-hand man when they ventured to the South Pole. They had hoped to be the first to reach the pole, but were five weeks too slow; they died on the return journey. Wilson froze to death in his sleeping bag; Scott was found dead beside him, one arm reaching towards Wilson.
Wilson, who was also a medical doctor and ornithologist, had a knack for painting.
The clean, intricate details of his drawings were instantly recognisable to Bergmark-Jimenez. ‘‘As soon as I saw his images and the handwriting on his images, I knew it must have been him who painted the picture,’’ she said.
It is not clear how the painting came to be stashed at the hut. Wilson did not spend any significant time there, meaning it was likely brought back by someone else.
It was likely painted while Wilson was recovering from tuberculosis, a period in the late 19th century in which he refined his painting skill.
‘‘Clearly, he could have taken the painting to Antarctica on either of Scott’s expeditions but we think it is more likely the artwork travelled with him in 1911 and somehow made its way from Cape Evans to Cape Adare,’’ said artefact conservation programme manager Lizzie Meek.
What remains unknown is why, 12 years after it was painted, Wilson sailed the world with his creation; why he trusted it to another explorer, who took it across the ice and hid it where it would remain undiscovered for a century.