Ski Art: John Bertoncini (1872-1947)

Veteran whaler John Bertoncini, known as Johnny the Painter, brought the rigors of the Arctic and the whaling industry to life in his art work. Here, ice-bound crews exit their whaling ships in the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean.

Swedish-American artist John Bertoncini was born in Stockholm in 1872, to a Swedish mother who had married an immigrant Italian theater-scenery painter. We do not know when he emigrated to the United States, but it appears his first Arctic voyage was in 1892. He signed on for whaling and trading voyages for another 38 years, eventually going aboard as captain and mate, occasionally. His many paintings—he was known as Johnny the Painter—provide a major view of Arctic life and now may be viewed in a number of museums, most prominently in the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts.

This oil-on-canvas painting documents ice-bound whalers at play on Herschel Island (Inuit: Qikiqtaruk) in the Beaufort Sea, some three miles off the Arctic coast of the Yukon. Favored by the whaling fleets, various supply and trading companies, and local Inuits, the island often harbored 1,000 people. Most whalers preferred to sleep in their boats rather than in the ramshackle huts on the ice. The painting shows seven whaling ships, the community storehouse, freshwater ice on stages and two piles of coal. And the men? There they are playing football, baseball and (top right) skiing.

There cannot be many ship’s logs that report “Great excitements. Coasting and Skeing.” The date was Sunday, February 18, 1894, when Captain Hartson H. Bodfish of the barkentine Newport, of West Tisbury, Massachusetts, recorded the day’s events. The sports described include fun-of-the-fair three-legged races and sack races—nothing too serious and all meant to counteract the winter boredom which could so easily lead to alcoholism and bad, often bloody, behavior.

A few captains brought their wives and, occasionally, daughters on voyages, and the ladies leavened the social life with homely teas. Sometimes they joined the men skiing. As at home, women’s fashion was a hot topic, and the ladies’ trousers were “cut with legs quite loose and very full aft” as one captain wrote admiringly. Bertoncini was witness to the tough life of the seamen, their successes, failures and their freedoms, seen here in the sporting activities.