Classic Ponting photograph from Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition (1910-1913), showing Cecil Meares sitting at the pianolo. Meares, who was in charge of the dog teams on the expedition, had a varied background having worked in the Siberian fur trade, taken part in the Brooke expedition to Tibet, and had been in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion.

The Terra Nova expedition was supposed to be the high-water mark of the Golden Age of Antarctic exploration; led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the expedition was to have been the first to reach the South Pole, marking the event with the planting of the Union Jack flag. However the more professionally equipped Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen got there first. Nevertheless Scott's expedition will always be the one best remembered on account of the tremendous courage and bravery shown by Scott and his companions, Wilson, Bowers, Oates, and Evans on their return from the Pole in appalling conditions - perhaps best exemplified by Lawrence 'Titus' Oates who walked from the tent into a blizzard whilst suffering from frostbite and gangrene, knowing that he was not going to survive the journey but hoping that his self-sacrifice might help the others survive.

The photographs were originally published by the Fine Art Society in 1914 in larger format using a different process. It is difficult to date images such as ours, printed at a later date from the original negatives, however based on external evidence from previous examples we date the present image to circa 1935.



Silver gelatin print, mounted, framed and glazed, captioned below image on mount. Image size: 214 x 289 mm; framed: 282 x 349 mm.