Painted in oils on a canvas measuring 40 x 50 inches, it was created in 1934 for the federal government's first Depression-era program for artists, the half-year Public Works of Art Project.
In February 1934, Dickinson was invited to participate in the Public Works of Art Project, which offered him weekly pay and an exhibition of the painting in Washington in May.
He finished the work on time by reworking an abandoned painting, one of a small group done from imagination on a favorite subject, polar exploration,[1] and changing its title to Stranded Brig.
But evidence, both internal and external, support Adler's interpretation: the upended rocks do appear to crush the ship, and the depicted rock formations and Watkins Glen, referred to by Dickinson in discussing the picture's man-made structures, both pertain to his native region of western New York state, as does the trapped weasel, based on one he had found in a glen in Sheldrake.
Indeed, his reported comments about Stranded Brig, probably in the fall or winter of 1932,[11] before it was reworked for the PWAP, indicate the pressure he felt to do justice not only to this picture but to the unfinished Woodland Scene, which was becoming more difficult to finish than he had expected.