In 1973 Doris McCarthy returned to the glorious Arctic on another painting trip, inspired after her first encounter with an iceberg – “the brilliant turquoise and green of the deep crevasses of glacial ice” - near Pond Inlet the year earlier. Again, McCarthy was invited to stay with John and Colly Scullion, John being the settlement manager at Pond Inlet. The Scullions were transferred to Cape Dorset on the south side of Baffin Island and organized an overnight trip for McCarthy to Frobisher Bay and Pangnirtung, “part way up a narrow, twisting fiord.”
McCarthy’s paintings of icebergs and the Arctic landscape, including “Pangnirtung” are considered to be among the artist’s best known and most celebrated works. Recalling her time in Pangnirtung in one of her memoirs, “My Life”, the artist notes: “The painting was terrific. Twice a day, the tide sent a flotilla of ice floes sailing up the fiord. As the tide ebbed, they went back to sea. I came home with enough work for an exhibition of watercolors and small acrylics (This new medium was as good as oils, and its quicker drying made convenient for packing).”
