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Type: CO (Cursed Object).
Period/location of origin: 1864, England, United Kingdom. The precise location of origin remains unknown, although two possibilities have been proposed: At the artist’s home in St. John’s Wood, London, or at the home of the artist’s patron in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. (See: Additional notes.)
Appearance: Subject, an allegedly cursed painting titled Man Proposes, God Disposes created by English artist Edwin Landseer in 1864, appears to be a work of oil on canvas depicting an imagined aftermath of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845 Arctic expedition through the Northwest Passage. The work measures 91.4 centimeters by 243.7 centimeters, or roughly 36 inches by 96 inches.
The painting features two polar bears tearing violently at what appears to be the wreckage of a ship, set against a backdrop of glaciers, ice floes, and patches of fatally cold water. Among the artifacts that make up the wreck are a brass telescope, scraps of a blue uniform, the remains of masts and sails, a red flag, and what are typically said to be human bones. One of the bears pulls at the flag with its teeth, while the other gnaws on a bone.
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Man Proposes, God Disposes hangs in the Picture Gallery of Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL) in Surrey. The Picture Gallery is frequently used as an exam site during examination periods at the university; when exams are being sat, a Union Jack flag is draped over the painting, hiding it from view. For further information regarding this practice and the reasoning behind it, see: Modus operandi AND Containment.
Modus operandi: Subject is believed by some to be cursed, although precisely what form that curse takes depends on the report.
According to some reports, the curse is relatively mild; these reports assert that targets seated directly in front of the painting while sitting an exam are doomed to fail said exam. These reports do not state what, precisely, causes the failure, although realistically peaking, it likely has more to do with the student taking the exam becoming distracted by the grisly image nearby than with any supernatural or otherworldly quality associated with the painting.
Other reports, however, pin a much darker MO to the curse. According to these reports, targets who gaze directly into the eyes of one of the polar bears may suddenly be seized by some malevolent force. The target may subsequently harm themselves in some way — reports often state that a pencil is involved, as is an eye socket — leaving behind only a single clue before they do this deed: A scrawled statement on their exam paper reading, “The polar bears made me do it” — written, of course, with the aforementioned pencil before it meets the waiting eye socket. The target may or may not survive this event; whether or not they do varies by report.
Targets do not, unfortunately, have much of a choice when it comes to their being targeted in the first place; nor does subject necessarily choose them. Targets are merely those unlucky enough to be seated by subject for an exam.
Subject’s goal does not appear to be anything other than what it appears: To cause mayhem and tragedy.
Containment: The painting is rendered harmless by one simple intervention: Covering it up. With the image hidden, students may sit their exams in the Royal Holloway Picture Gallery without incident. Traditionally, a large Union Jack flag is deployed as a coverup for the painting during RHUL exam periods.
Why a flag? Campus lore states that it dates back to the 1970s, when rumors of the Man Proposes, God Disposes curse became so prevalent that one student who had been seated next to the painting during an exam refused to take the test with the “cursed” item so nearby. Dr. Laura MacCulloch, who was the college curator for RHUL from 2012 to 2022, told the BBC in 2014 that the flag was subsequently rummaged up by a desperate registrar as a possible solution to the problem: Said MacCulloch, “The poor registrar, who just wanted to get the exam underway, ran off and tried to find the biggest thing that she could to cover the picture.” That “thing” ended up being the flag in question — and this same flag has been used to hide the painting each exam period thereafter.
Man Proposes, God Disposes may be viewed safely at any other time outside of exam periods.
Additional notes: As previously stated, the scene depicted in Man Proposes, God Disposes is an imagined outcome of the 1845 Arctic expedition led by Sir John Franklin. Sent by Sir John Barrow, then Second Secretary to the Admiralty, Franklin was to lead two ships — the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, both of which had been used in previous Arctic expeditions — crewed by a total of 129 sailors through the as-yet unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage. The expedition departed from Greenhithe in Kent on May 19, 1845.
The two ships and their crews made their way to the Orkney Islands in Scotland, then continued on to Greenland. In July of 1845, they were seen by two whaling ships in Baffin Bay, located between Greenland and Baffin Island — but that sighting ended up being the last one: Neither of the ships and none of the sailors were ever seen alive again.
The first search for the missing expedition was launched by the Admiralty in 1848, with only limited results. This remained true for a number of other searches launched in the years following, with only bits and pieces — artifacts, notes, and the like — emerging bit by bit.
The McClintock Arctic expedition, launched in 1857 and concluded in 1859, returned the fullest picture of what had occurred, retrieving a number of artifacts from Inuit peoples who had found them (but, notably, had not laid eyes on Franklin or the missing crew), as well as several notes from officers aboard the Erebus and Terror bearing dates of May 4, 1847 and April 25, 1848. These notes chronicle not just the activity of the ships’ crews, but also a death tally — including that of Franklin himself: According to the second note, Franklin died on June 11, 1847. The actual remains of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror themselves were not unearthed at this time.
The findings of the McClintock expedition were published in 1859 under the title The Voyage Of The Fox — the Fox being the name of the steam yacht employed in this expedition.
For nearly 170 years, the Franklin expedition was considered lost; as such, it is often referred to as “Franklin’s lost expedition.” In 2014, however, the remains of one of the two ships — later determined to be the HMS Erebus — were located, with the discovery of the wreckage of the HMS Terror occurring two years later, in 2016.
The general belief today is that the two ships became trapped in the ice near King William Island, with the crew gradually perishing due to pneumonia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, botulism, exposure, and starvation. Theories have also been floated about possible cannibalism, suggested by cut marks discovered on bones recovered from King William Island.
Illustrated London News on May 24, 1845.
Artist Edwin Landseer, born in 1802, is most well-known for his work depicting animals; sculptor in addition to a painter, among his most notable contributions are the four lions positioned at the base of Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square.
Landseer painted Man Proposes, God Disposes towards the end of his life: The work was completed in 1864, roughly nine years before his death in 1873. He is believed to have relied on The Voyage Of The Fox for many of the details included in Man Proposes, God Disposes, per a 2009 article by art historian Andrew Moore published in the British Art Journal.
(Re: Subject’s location of origin: It is also Moore who points out the two possible locations at which Landseer may have created the painting. Moore notes that letters Landseer wrote circa 1863-4 to paleontologist Sir Hugh Falconer, from whom he borrowed a polar bear skull to use as a reference, suggest Landseer’s own home in St. John’s Wood as one possibility; however, it is also possible Landseer could have painted the work at the home of his patron, Edward Coleman, who occupied the Old Manor Home at Stoke Poges.)
Thomas Holloway, founder of Royal Holloway, University of London, acquired Man Proposes, God Disposes at auction in 1881. It has hung in the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway ever since.
Originally a women’s college, Royal Holloway became a constituent of the University of London in 1900; it later merged with Bedford College, also a women’s college and University of London constituent, in 1985. Both colleges’ undergraduate programs became coeducational in 1965 (although Royal Holloway’s postgraduate program had become coeducational several decades earlier, in 1945).
It is believed that stories of the alleged curse connected to Man Proposes, God Disposes were circulating at least by the 1920s or 1930s, although it is not precisely how or when the stories began in the first place. There does not appear to be any record of an incident involving subject, a student, and a pencil during an exam actually having occurred, although this fact obviously has not stopped the stories of the curse from spreading regardless.
The legend of the curse did not reach its full form until the 1970s, when the Union Jack incident occurred; the necessity of covering up the painting during exams became the final part of the tale, after which it has remained primarily in the same form.
Students at Royal Holloway today are still very aware of the legend, although most of them say that they do not actually believe the painting to be cursed. Despite this fact, however, many still say that they would not want to sit next to it, uncovered, during an exam. Doing so, they say, is simply “not worth the risk.”
The Royal Holloway Victorian Picture Gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 10am to 3pm. Additionally, the collection may be explored online via art UK and Smartify.
Recommendation: Don’t look at the bears.
Just in case.
Resources:
Man Proposes, God Disposes at Royal Holloway’s website.
“The Painting Reputed To Make Students Fail Exams” at the BBC.
“Why Do So Many Students At Royal Holloway Fear Edwin Landseer’s Eerie Painting?” at Huffington Post UK.
“The Haunted Painting Of Fabled Franklin Ship Discovered In The Canadian Arctic” at The Conversation.
“Man Proposes, God Disposes: Is It Haunted?” at Royal Holloway’s YouTube channel.
“Sir Edwin Landseer’s Man Proposes, God Disposes And The Fate Of Franklin” in the British Art Journal (via JSTOR).
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[Photos via public domain (1, 2)/Wikimedia Commons; Alan Hunt/Wikimedia Commons, available under a CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED Creative Commons license]
CW: Self-h*rm, suic*de.
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