Frederick Whymper

Place: London

Born: 1838

Death: 1901

Biography:

Frederick Whymper was a British artist and explorer, born on July 20, 1838, in London, United Kingdom, and died on November 26, 1901, in London, United Kingdom. He was the eldest son of Elizabeth Whitworth Claridge and Josiah Wood Whymper, a celebrated wood-engraver and artist. His younger brother Edward Whymper was a renowned alpinist who made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865. In his youth, Whymper was a talented artist working to produce engravings for publication and having his landscapes on exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 1859 to 1861. He traveled to Victoria, British Columbia in 1862 and to the Cariboo in the following year. In 1864, he joined road builders in the area of Bute Inlet on the Pacific Coast, leaving shortly before the Chilcotin War. Many of his early travels were by steamship; his drawings include volcanoes on Kamchatka and Alaskan glaciers. While in the far north, Whymper served on the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition and the Western Union Telegraph Expedition (1865), spending the winter of 1866 at Nulato, Alaska with W.H. Dall and traveling up the Yukon River to Fort Yukon, where he witnessed the first American flag being raised.