Admiral Sir George Back FRS (6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer of the Canadian Arctic, naturalist and artist.

As a boy, he went to sea as a volunteer in the frigate HMS Arethusa in 1808 and took part in the destruction of batteries on the Spanish coast.

[2] Back remained a prisoner at Verdun until the peace of early 1814; during this time he studied French and mathematics and practised his skills as an artist, which he later put to use in recording his travels through the Canadian Arctic.

This was the main unknown region, along with a few hundred miles eastward from Point Barrow and the area around King William Island which was completely misunderstood.

From there he would drag boats overland to seawater and sail the unknown coast west to the Back River and Franklin's Point Turnagain.

It remained icebound for 10 months: at one point Terror was pushed 40 ft (12 m) up the side of a cliff by the pressure of the ice.

[2] Back served as an advisor to the Admiralty during the search for Franklin's lost expedition, and as vice-president of the Royal Geographical Society, having received its gold and silver medal.

Although nominally retired, Back remained on the Admiralty List and, based on seniority, he was promoted to vice-admiral in 1863 and finally admiral in 1867.

Historian Leslie H. Neatby wrote, “Back had neither the seriousness of disposition nor the intensity of purpose which are indispensable to the great captain.

No other man has viewed the scenery of the Canadian North with so appreciative an eye, nor has been able to give such full and vigorous expression to that appreciation.”[3] A watercolour of an iceberg, believed to have been painted by Back following his 1836–37 expedition, sold at auction on 13 September 2011 for $59,600, despite its being unsigned and undated.

The auction house opined that the scene surrounding the towering iceberg appears to match a description in Back's Narrative of an Expedition in H.M.S.

[11] A recent collection of twelve portrait studies of male and female characters mainly from the Canadian Yellow Knife Tribe, eleven of which were personally signed by the artist, sold for £24,000 at auction on 16 June 2020.