Frederick Whymper was a topographical explorer, artist, illustrator and author best known for his documentation of the west coast of North America. Born in London is 1838, he was the eldest son of eleven children of Elizabeth Whitworth Claridge and the celebrated wood-engraver and artist Josiah Wood Whymper. Frederick’s brothers include the renowned Alpinist and mountain climber Edward Whymper, and the artist and book illustrator Charles H. Whymper. Frederick began his artistic career working with his father producing engravings, and when at the age of 21 he began to exhibit his landscapes at the Royal Academy in London.
In 1862 Frederick left London for adventure on the rugged west coast of North America, arriving first in Victoria on Vancouver Island and then the following spring embarking on a sketching tour of the Cariboo district of British Columbia which was the heart of the second big British Columbia Gold Rush. The small town of Victoria which previously had consisted of primarily Hundson’s Bay employees, farmers and their families, had boomed to include miners preparing to journey to the goldfields and suppliers who had set up supply shops with required gear. When he arrived in the Cariboo in 1863, Whymper was commissioned to create drawings for many claim holders and mining companies, which he produced with topographical precision. He also made sketches and drawing sets for prominent citizens of British Columbia, including works for Donald Frazer who had been a member of the Council of Vancouver Island, and Matthew Baillie Begbie the Executive Council of British Columbia.
Whymper wintered in Victoria before being hired in March 1864 to publicize the new Cariboo Wagon Road being built by the Royal Engineers. He set out to Bute Inlet to draw and document the event however the enterprise was plagued with problems. Although Whymper provided generally good reports, his account of the attack and subsequent killing of builders on the project by local First Nations caused a sensation. While his depictions in writing of the project caused the most excitement, his drawing of the expedition was noted in the Victoria Daily Colonist. The project was eventually abandoned.
After arriving back in Victoria, Whymper joined the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition as the documenting artist, applying multiple times for the job before finally landing the position. This expedition covered much of the southern part of Vancouver Island. Whymper exhibited 33 drawings from the expedition upon his return to Victoria in November 1864. The following year he joined the Russian-American Telegraph project building a telegraph line to link the United States to Europe via British Columbia, Alaska, and Siberia. He traveled North with the project to Norton Sound, Alaska, and during the summer crossed to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia. He wintered in San Francisco and then rejoined the project in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and continued with them to the Gulf of Anadyr. By the end of October 1866, he had crossed to Mikhailovski (St. Michael Island), the northern most Russian settlement in Alaska. He wintered in Nulato, then continued down the Yukon River to Fort Yukon where he was informed that another project’s transatlantic telegraph cable had been successfully laid. Whymper was present in Fort Yukon when the first American flag was raised over the new territory of Alaska. When he returned to Mikhailovski in late summer, he was told the Russian-American Telegraph project had been abandoned.
In November of 1867 Whymper returned to England to write his book Travel and Adventure in the territory of Alaska. The book contained several chapters on his travels in British Columbia and was illustrated with his drawings.
In 1869 Frederick Whymper had returned to San Francisco to work at the Newspaper Alta California. In 1871 he became a founding member of the San Francisco Art Association. It is interesting to note that when he returned to North America, he chose San Francisco over Victoria. In his book Travel and Adventure in the territory of Alaska, it is clear that Whymper had patronising views of Victoria’s society, but it was through his publications and engravings of his drawings of British Columbia that he drew attention to the region. His engravings were used not only in his publications but also in Robert Brown’s The Countries of the World published circa 1880, Gilbert Malcolm Sproat’s Scenes and Studies of Savage Life published in 1868, and the Illustrated London News.
By the mid 1870’s Whymper was again publishing in England. Most of the subjects were popular books of adventure and history. His books of the period would occasionally contain his illustrations, but it seems that he had abandoned art for writing by this time. He died in London in 1901 of what was described in his obituary as “failure of the heart, probably due to indigestion, arising from sedentary pursuits.” Mount Whymper, north of Lake Cowichan, is named in his honour as he was the first to ascend its peak in 1864. The other Mount Whymper, located in Kootenay National Park, is named for his brother Edward.
Many of Frederick Whymper’s drawings are preserved in the Visual Records Unit at the BCARS, the Bancroft Library, University of California, and the Beinecke Rare Book and MS Library of Yale University Library. A partial list of Whymper’s sketches and engravings after them can be found in Painting During the Colonial Period in British Columbia, 1845–1871 by Helen Bergen Peters and a list of drawings relating to the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition is included in Robert Brown and the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition, edited by John Hayman.