the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

painting North Pole Group No. 1, 6th April 1969.It may seem unfair, but the sheer scale of SirWally’s achievement is not widely recognizedoutside the exploration community. Yet the factsof his career as a polar explorer are simply extraordinary.Over the span of half a century he traveledwith dog teams and open boats more than 40,000kilometers—over half of that distance through virginterritory. A formidablecartographer andsurveyor, he mappedsome 75,000 kilometersof new countryin Antarctica andretraced the routes ofsome of the greatestexplorers in history.Few have contributedmore to ourunderstanding of thenative Inuit of northwestGreenland. Hepublished ten books, received many medals andawards, including the coveted Explorer’s Medal in1985, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II onthe last day of the second millennium “for servicesto polar exploration.”What is not so well known is that he was anextraordinary artist, which his last book, The PolarWorld, makes clear. Nearly all of Sir Wally’s paintingshave been brought together for the first time.Nearly all, says Kari, because there are “four orfive paintings that are either lost or are hard totrack down. I’d like to hear from anyone who hasone that is not reproduced in The Polar World.”Sir Wally was a commercial artist in the sensethat he painted for a living—this means much ofhis work has disappeared into private collections.Reinhold Messner commissioned both Everestand The Landfall of the James Caird on SouthGeorgia, included in the book, despite having noobvious polar association. Kari remembers as achild watching the paintings grow over time only tosee them packed up and shipped off to the client“almost before the paint had dried.” Sir Wally wasin the habit of commissioning high-quality, largeformatplate photography of his finished work andit is from these transparencies that much of thebook has been assembled.And yet Sir Wally might never have becomean artist, despite showing a talent for drawing26at school. Kari explains, “When dad retiredfrom expeditions in the early 1980s, he officiallybecame a full-time writer—that’s how he earnedhis living. But the book deals dried up a bit.”Despite his fame, he met with little successwhen hawking his book proposals. “He was gettingfed up with being rejected and I think mumthought it would be a good idea for him to takeup painting again torelieve the stress.”Reluctant to do thisat first, he soonfound that his childhoodaptitude forart had coalescedwith his professionalexpertise indraftsmanship andcartography to producepaintings thatnot only attracted acommercial market,but gained the attention of the likes of HRH thePrince of Wales, who in Kari’s words, “becamedad’s biggest fan.”His “biggest fan” has described Sir Wallyvariously as a “genius” and “a national treasure,”but to Kari, who is an accomplished writer andphotographer in her own right, “my dad was theembodiment of the polar world and so it follows heshould paint it.” The Polar World is an extraordinaryepitaph to a man of many gifts—writer, painter,genuine explorer of the old school, and one of thegreat men of the twentieth century.informationCopies of The Polar World are available from Polarworld Booksin standard hardback edition (£35) or in two special limitededitions: leather hand-bound, £499 and cloth, £240. Forinformation, contact: kari@kariherbert.combiographyA Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Nick Smith isa writer and photographer specializing in exploration andtravel. He is also literary editor of Bookdealer magazine. Hiswork has appeared in publications from the Daily Telegraph toCountry Life.North Pole Group No 1 6th April 1969