A popular photograph of a bronze sculpture on a Vancouver park bench features a warm embrace frozen in time--as well as a delicate dusting of frost.
The sculpture, entitled "Departure," features a man with his arm around a woman who is curled deep in his embrace. He rests his other arm on a suitcase, too.
The layer of frost, however, offers a haunting perspective of the intimate pair, who appear frozen in time, immortalized in cold.
The wintry snap was shared to Reddit by shawneffel, who comments that the image was "Taken on a cold morning at the VanDusen botanical garden in Vancouver."
At the time of this writing, it has been up-voted a whopping 110,000 times.
A gift of "Departure"
According to the City of Vancouver, the bronze sculpture was gifted to the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association in 2013.
But while the sculpture is striking, it isn't one-of-a-kind.
Travellers may also view "Departure" in South Fiddler's Green Circle, Greenwood Village, Colorado.
The sculptor, American artist George Lundeen, hails from south of the border in Holdrege, Nebraska. However, he studied at the Academia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy and says he based "Departure" on a sketch he drew of a couple waiting in an Italian train station.
Of the sculpture, the Museum of Outdoor Arts writes: "The inclination toward travel is a universal instinct, and this sculpture nonetheless communicates the physical and emotional drive to move, grow, and inevitably change."
Visit the City of Vancouver to locate the famous sculpture on your next stroll in VanDusen Botanical Garden.
