Britannia’s Palette: The Arts of Naval Victory 9780773575851

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations Used in Captions
1 Artists and the Navy
2 The Glorious First of June
3 St Vincent and Camperdown
4 The Nile, Copenhagen, and Minor Engagements to the Eve of Trafalgar
5 Trafalgar
6 The World War
7 Official Painters
8 Painters of the Sea
9 Joseph Mallord William Turner
10 Postwar Painters
Postscript
Appendix: Printing Techniques
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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GAZETEER
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Europe & Mediterranean
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World
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INDEX OF SHIPS
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Citation preview

B r i t a n n i a’ s Pa l e t t e

B r i tann i a’s Pal et te T h e A r t s o f N av al V i c t o r y

✵ NICHOLAS TRACY

M c G I LL -Q U E E N ’S U N I VE R S I T Y P R E S S Montreal & Kingston

•

London

•

Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2007 isbn 978-0-7735-3113-0 Legal deposit first quarter 2007 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Grants from the University of New Brunswick Vice President Research, and from the Milton Greg Centre for the Study of War and Society have made possible the publication of images. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Tracy, Nicholas, 1944– Britannia’s palette : the arts of naval victory / Nicholas Tracy. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3113-0 1. Great Britain. Royal Navy – In art. 2. Naval battles in art. 3. War artists – Great Britain – Biography. 4. Napoleonic Wars, 1800–1815 – Art and the wars. 5. First Coalition, War of the, 1792–1797 – Art and the war. 6. Second Coalition, War of the, 1798–1801 – Art and the war. 7. Marine painting, British – 18th century. 8. Marine painting, British – 19th century. I. Title. nd267.t73

2007 758⬘.99402745

c2006-902816-8

This book was designed and typeset by studio oneonone in Sabon 10.3/13.5

Contents

Preface / ix Abbreviations Used in Captions / xiii 1 Artists and the Navy / 3 2 The Glorious First of June / 42 3 St Vincent and Camperdown / 94 4 The Nile, Copenhagen, and Minor Engagements to the Eve of Trafalgar / 129 5 Trafalgar / 165 6 The World War / 193 7 Official Painters / 225 8 Painters of the Sea / 258 9 Joseph Mallord William Turner / 268 10 Postwar Painters / 309 Postscript / 369 Appendix: Printing Techniques / 371 Notes / 375 Bibliography / 427 Index / 451

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This book is dedicated to Sarah Petite, encaustic artist, for her “real and unconquerable passion for excellence.” [Opie]

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P r e fa c e

Naval historians quarry the galleries and museums for images that will embellish their study of “more serious” aspects of naval operations, but few understand the importance of the self-employed artist to the study of a nation at war. Art historians, for their part, are not usually trained to address the questions that are peculiar to the study of naval pictures. There are several valuable dictionaries of sea painters: E.H.H. Archibald’s Dictionary of Sea Painters, David Cordingly’s Marine Painting in England 1700–1900, and Roger Quarm and Scott Wilcox’s Masters of the Sea, British Marine Watercolours. The isolation of individual artists, however, prevents modern readers from perceiving the community of naval artists. This band of brothers, through their artistic and entrepreneurial efforts, established the images of the war at sea which endure to this day and which were central to the understanding contemporaries had of events. The literature lacks a serious study of this collective effort. Contemporary biography or memoirs of several of the artists of naval victory have helped make this work possible. A memoir of John Thomas Serres was written by “a friend” to vindicate him after his miserable death, John Christian Schetky’s daughter Ludmilla wrote a charming account of his life, and George Chambers’s friend John Watkins wrote a stirring memoir of his short life. None of these can be considered a complete and balanced biography, but each has its merits. Walter Thornbury’s life of J.M.W. Turner, on the other hand, which he began to work on soon after the artist’s death, is defective both in fact and in interpretation. There are biographies or annotated show catalogues for most of the individual artists whose work is discussed in this book, but none of them are directed specifically at their work as war artists. Most importantly, the publication by Yale University Press of the complete text of

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Joseph Farington’s diary has opened many windows into the world of the naval artists. Farington was related to officers in the navy and the East India Company, and maintained an enduring interest in naval affairs. In 1808 an anonymous critic in The Review of Publications of Art wrote: “Histories of pictures [i.e., of their travels] are sometimes, though but seldom, interesting: what the public would much prefer, and what would contribute much more to the improvement of other painters … would be, an history of the mind of the painter whilst employed on it, and the circumstance, both physical and moral, by which he was at the time surrounded.”1 It is with that injunction in mind that this book has been written. Some of the greatest painting of the twentieth century is the officially sponsored work of the war artists who were able to address the horror – and commitment – in a way closer to the human psyche than could be achieved by photography. The world was very different in 1793 when the new French Republic declared war on Great Britain. This is reflected in the images of war created by self-employed entrepreneurial artists who needed to sell their work if they were to feed their families. Among their number were serving officers and men who had a professional need to record images, and who sometimes supplemented their poor pay and scant prize money by selling pictures. Others were sailors retired from the sea to concentrate on a vocation to paint, sometimes because they had no other way to earn a living. Still others were academy-trained professional painters who chose to address naval subjects because of their topicality, and the chance of earning a living from satisfying a public interest in the war at sea that was determining their futures. Sailors wanted pictures to record their trials and triumphs. The public wanted images of heroism and reassurance. The connoisseur wanted great art. These disparate motives produced a disparate collection of paintings among which can be discovered the poignancy of the human experience in war. There are structural difficulties about writing a collective biography when it is also necessary to deal with a sequence of events, and with conflicting value systems. The chronology of the war at sea cannot be kept in step with the work of the naval artists, who often undertook subjects long after the event, perhaps because of receiving a commission from an officer who had been involved. A literary structure that ignores the sequence of events at sea, however, is unthinkable, and some artists were personally involved in some of the actions. The work of the cartoonists

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was especially closely related to the march of events. I have adopted a compromise structure which recognizes that some of the work was immediate, and some was completed at later dates. Of the latter, only the work of artists who experienced the war years and witnessed the naval war themselves has been included. Inevitably, it has been necessary to be selective both of works and artists. The story of the war at sea is sketched in, making use of the lively accounts and opinions recorded by several of the artists of naval victory. The focus is on those who produced the great icons of the war, and on those who brought personal observation to their work. The subject is primarily the artists working with oils, watercolour, and pencil to create images of the naval war, but because of the commercial linkages between their work and that of the engravers, attention must also be given to the efforts of the latter. Every engraving inevitably began as a painting or drawing. Little attention has been given to naval portraiture, which is only incidentally naval and forms a coherent part of the study of portraiture. As most of the work of the sculptors who employed themselves in any way with naval subjects was focused on portraiture, they have only been brought into the story where they help provide context for the painters’ efforts. A work such as this can only be done with the enthusiastic participation of the archivists and porters of the art and manuscript libraries. I would like particularly to acknowledge the cheerful cooperation at the National Maritime Museum, where I received every assistance from Dr Roger Quarm and Arthur James. It is particularly gratifying to be able to make this acknowledgment, as it is indicative of a new culture which was noticeably absent ten years ago when I first contemplated this work. I also received cheerful support in the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum, but it is with concern that I watched the most experienced librarians leaving for other employment. Alan Pearsall, although long retired from the museum, has, as always, made his invaluable advice freely available. The Victoria and Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings has been exceptionally helpful. I owe a particular debt to the long-suffering assistants in the Prints and Drawings Department at the British Museum, where I began and finished my work with the help of Angela Roche and Martin Royalton-Kisch, and I must acknowledge with gratitude the very creative assistance of Sarah Taft in the Clore study room at the Tate Gallery. Enthusiastic assistance was also provided by the staff

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in the Rare Book Room at the British Library, who frequently greeted me by name even after several months’ absence, and I must also acknowledge the helpful attitude of the staff in the archive in the National Portrait Gallery, and in the library in the National Gallery. Jenny Wraight at the Admiralty Library, Mathew Sheldon at the Royal Naval Museum, Francis Harris at the British Library, Peter Thwait and John Peirce at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and Bruno Pappalardo at the Public Record Office have also provided important support. I must thank the staff of the Nova Scotia Museum for enabling me to read Marie Elwood’s manuscript on John Elliott Woolford. Amongst those who helped me by responding to my e-mail enquiries are Josephine M. Birtwhistle, Registrar and Curator of Art at the Royal Naval Museum; Mrs Patricia Mead and Mrs B. King at the Teignmouth and Shaldon Museum; Caroline Worthington at Exeter City Museums; Iain Brown at the National Library of Scotland; Norma Watt, Assistant Keeper of Art, Norwich Castle Study Centre; Moira Lindsay at the Walker Art Gallery; Susanna Kerr, curator at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; Lucille Banville, National Gallery of Canada; and Chris Stevens, superintendent of the Royal Collection, Hampton Court Palace. I am particularly grateful for the enthusiastic assistance of Huon Mallalieu, who not only put his expertise as the acknowledged scholar of British watercolourists at my disposal but also undertook to read the completed manuscript. To those who may question how a naval historian had the audacity to take on the complications of art history, like Johnson’s dog standing on his hinder legs, I can only plead that I got by with a little help from my friends.

Ab b r e viat i on s Used in Captions

bm ngs ngc nls nmm npg nwhcm pro

British Museum National Gallery of Scotland National Gallery of Canada National Library of Scotland National Maritime Museum National Portrait Gallery Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery Public Record Office, National Archives

The decorative images used in the text at the head of chapters are all from William Henry Pyne’s Microcosm: or a Picturesque Delineation of the Arts, Agriculture, Manufactures, &c of Great Britain in a Series of above a Thousand Groups of Small Figures for the Embellishment of Landscape comprising the most interesting subjects in rural and domestic scenery, in external and internal navigation, in country sports and employments, in the arts of war and peace. London: S. Goswell, 1803.

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B r i t a n n i a’ s Pa l e t t e

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One A r t i s t s a n d t h e N av y

Life and property were cheap in Italy in 1797. With the army of General Berthier beating on the gates of Rome, the blind Prince Altiere was desperate to liquidate his assets. Prominent in his collection of paintings were two famous history landscapes by Claude Gellée, known as Claude Lorraine. Their sale was illegal because the Pope claimed the right of first refusal, but The Landing of Aeneas and The Sacrifice of Apollo were acquired nonetheless by a pair of English artists living in Rome, Robert Fagan and Charles Grignion. Gellée was one of the great masters. The French were determined to add the celebrated paintings to the spoils of war, and when they could not be found, Fagan was imprisoned. But he was released when Rome was briefly “liberated” by the King of Naples, and the pair fled by road to Naples with the canvasses rolled up on a cart. The French quickly recovered Rome, and then marched south to occupy Naples. Fagan and Grignion were one step ahead, and found passage to Palermo in a polacca loaded with refugees. There, anchored in the roads, they found part of the British Mediterranean Fleet under the command of the hero of the Battle of the Nile, Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson. Grignion obtained an introduction and painted Nelson’s portrait. At dinner with Nelson he mentioned the “Claudes” and his concern for their safety. “This,” Nelson is reported to have said, “is a national concern.” He wrote to the governor of Gibraltar asking him to provide an escort for the small armed vessel Tigre, which it had been arranged should carry the canvasses to England.1 The Claude landscapes were not the only works of art the Mediterranean Fleet sought to save from the French. Nelson’s host in Palermo was the British Envoy to the Court of Naples, Sir William Hamilton, who is best known as the elderly husband of the beautiful Emma. Her

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welcome of Nelson after he returned wounded from the Nile had turned his head, and she was to become his mistress and bear his only child. Sir William was a notable scholar and an antiquary. His diplomatic dispatches were filled with watercolour drawings of the eruption of Vesuvius, and he had an important collection of ancient vases. Before the fall of Naples to the French, space had been made available in the hold of hms Colossus for their conveyance to England. Another art rescue on the largest scale was to be mounted in late 1800 following the Battle of Marengo, when Captain Hugh Downman took charge of the art treasures in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and conveyed them to Palermo out of reach of the French. The Claude canvasses were to reach England safely. Due to a mistake in the bill of lading, they were immediately put to auction, but were bought back for a small sum. Griginon and Fagan had paid £2,250 for them in Rome and sold them to the wealthy collector William Beckford with four smaller old masters for £7,000. J.M.W. Turner, Benjamin West, William Daniell, and John Constable were among a throng of artists who saw them at Beckford’s house at Grosvenor Square in London, where the American Embassy and the Canadian High Commission are now located, and found them “beyond the power of imitation.”2 Unfortunately the Colossus was driven by a storm onto the rocks in St Mary’s road at the Scilly Isles in December 1798 and all the vases in her hold were lost in the wreck; however, it was discovered that by accident the best of them had not been put on board.3 It is unlikely that Nelson’s interest in a pair of landscapes was very deep, but his thirst for fame was unceasing. The Nelson scholar Oliver Warner has counted thirty portraits of Nelson painted during his lifetime, including the Grignion portrait.4 Historian Richard Walker has catalogued over 200 portraits, or derivative portraits, including medals and sculptures.5 Sailors who had grown wealthy from prize money could afford to have their portraits painted by the most fashionable artists. The list of naval portraits by George Romney, to name one artist alone, includes Sir Hyde Parker, who was to command the 1801 Copenhagen campaign, the Right Honourable Henry Dundas, Treasurer of the Navy, Sir John Orde, Admiral of the White, Sir Charles Hardy, who was captain of hms Victory at the battle of Trafalgar, the Honourable Augustus Keppel, Admiral of the Blue, and a crayon drawing of Nelson wearing his decorations for the victory at the Nile. Romney also painted portraits of Emma as a Bacchante, as reading the Gazette announcing one of Nel-

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son’s Victories, as Ariadne, as St. Cecilia, as The Spinster, as Nursed by Tragedy and Comedy, and as Nature. Romney was definitely impressed by Emma. Portraiture has always been important to the rich and powerful, but naval officers also liked to have portraits painted of their ships, and to have their hours of glory commemorated in pictures of the battles they had fought and won. Important artists of naval subjects, notably Nicholas Pocock, Thomas Luny, and George Chambers, acquired steady patronage from senior naval officers. It was not only the sailors who valued such pictures. Artist entrepreneurs often undertook battle pictures without any commission, hoping to find a buyer amongst a public which hung upon news of the war at sea, knowing that their safety and freedom depended on the work of the navy. Only the wealthy could afford to be collectors of paintings, but the general public could purchase reproductions of them made by engravers. This market did indeed make the work of the artists a national concern, and it was recognized as such by Court patronage. There were no officially sponsored “war artists” as there were to be for the wars of the twentieth century, but the king and royal dukes, and even such major corporations as the East India Company, provided support for artists by purchasing paintings and by granting honorific status as “Marine Painter to the Duke of Clarence,” or “Engraver of Marine Subjects to the King,” which further strengthened the market for artists by encouraging the wealthy and the loyal to purchase their work. Wars are fought by nations, by communities of people who can only respond collectively to national concerns if they can arrive at consensus about common values. Image makers are important in harnessing the national energy, especially when the events of importance occur out of sight of all but a very small proportion of the community. Probably the most famous sentence in naval history was written by an American Admiral, Alfred Thayer Mahan, about The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire: “Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the domination of the world.”6 The artists who portrayed the “wooden world” of the navy played a central role in its history by the effect they had on public opinion. The average Briton might never have seen the battle fleets of the Royal Navy any more than had Napoleon’s Grand Army, but images of the war at sea were exhibited in the Royal Academy and in private galleries, and prints based on them were displayed in printsellers’ windows and offered for sale to the general public.

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In France, naval art had an appeal on account of its exoticism. But the British navy was much closer to the psyche of the English, even of those who lived far from the sea. From the end of the middle ages, naval affairs had been a part of the collective consciousness. Nevertheless, there was a great interest in the expeditions being sent under naval direction to explore the arctic and the Pacific for new peoples, new geography, and new flora and fauna. It was here that the English sought their exoticism.7 Voyages to the Pacific were also a school of scientific observation which stimulated a respect for representational fidelity in landscape painting.8

 Graphic representation of the navy had lines of descent from ship portraiture, battle reportage, portraiture, and history painting. Ship portraits, such as those in the Anthony Roll of surveying Henry VIII’s Navy, could be used as an official inventory of the fleet, and served a similar purpose as did the models made by ship builders for the information of their clients.9 Ship portraits also served to satisfy the pride of shipowners. This tradition of ship portraiture set standards for naval painting which artists such as J.M.W. Turner defied at their peril. John Thomas Serres, an Admiralty Draughtsman and Official Painter of Marine Subjects first to the Duke of Clarence and later to King George III, wrote in 1805 of the problems faced by marine painters: “Many are the obstacles to attaining a proficiency in drawing Marine subjects, particularly as it is not only requisite that a person desirous of excelling in this Art, should possess a knowledge of the construction of a Ship, or of what is denominated Naval Architecture together with the proportions of masts & yards, the width depth & cut of the sails, &c.; but he should likewise be acquainted with Seamanship.”10 As John Watkins, George Chambers’s friend and biographer, put it a few years later: “The vanity that incites a man to have his own portrait taken, incites a captain to have the portrait of his vessel painted; and as vanity is very capricious, it is very difficult to be pleased and cannot be always pleased but at the expence of a true taste.” He also warned Chambers that even his attention to detail was not perfect. “Our mate, you may remember, was observing that your vessels are of a Baltic build. As we were going down the river he pointed a Norwegian out to me as an instance. I must confess there is some resemblance, but perhaps you design it should be so on account of the common look of our English

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ships. Nevertheless, I would simply suggest, that a ship with a British flag should have the characteristic build of her country.”11 Henry Angelo, who was a fencing master with very good connections and an entertaining author, wrote in 1828: “The painter, however easily he may conceive the structure of a mighty building – be it a temple, or be it a ship – must describe the subject perfectly with all its parts; he must set to work doggedly, as the great lexicographer, Johnson, said, and labour at the thing with the patience of a philosopher.”12 Jane Austen’s Admiral Croft, in Persuasion, remarked: “But what a thing here is, by way of a boat! Do look at it. Did you ever see the like? What queer fellows your fine painters must be, to think that anybody would venture their lives in such a shapeless old cockleshell as that? And yet here are two gentlemen stuck up in it mightily at their ease, and looking about them at the rocks and mountains, as if they were not to be upset the next moment, which they certainly must be. I wonder where that boat was built! (laughing heartily); I would not venture over a horsepond in it.”13 Jane was the sister of naval officers. Pictures intended for professional battle reportage tended to be semischematic, almost cartographic, and employed an oblique, bird’s eye perspective. Drawings of this type were used in James, Duke of York’s Instructions for the Better Ordering of the Fleet, circa 1688 to provide examples of tactical deployments through illustration of the battles of the Anglo-Dutch wars.14 These may have been the work of William Van de Velde the Younger who, with his father, had been granted a salary of £100 per annum in 1674 by King Charles II “for taking and making of Draughts of seafights” and for “putting the said Draughts into Colours for our particular use.”15 This traditional approach was kept to by Nicholas Pocock in some of his pictures of the battles of the French Republic and Empire. But at a time when balloon travel was a novelty over land – and to be avoided at all costs over the sea – bird’s eye perspectives of most naval battles could only be intellectual constructs. There were rarely convenient hillsides to give the artist any natural elevation. The departure from nature had inevitable consequences. Of no less concern to the world of the arts was that the battle schematic tradition severely limited the ability of the artist to create an effective composition, and that the scale of such paintings prevented the human element from being portrayed. A quarterdeck perspective had its own difficulties for battle pictures. Unless the pictures were confined to very small-scale distant views, it was impossible to portray the whole of the dozens of square miles of water

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needed for two fleets to engage. If the scale were to be great enough that any detail could be shown and the drama of the situation brought out to any degree, artists were obliged to make a careful selection of the subject to suggest the whole. The selected objects, ships damaged in action along with appropriate pieces of wreckage, had to be arranged to give an impression of a single-point perspective of a decisive moment in the battle, and to satisfy the ideals of tactical accuracy. Even an artist of the calibre of Philip de Loutherbourg could fall into disrepute when his composition gave a false impression of the tactical development of a battle. His capacity as an observer of detail was unsurpassed, but he was more interested in the dramatic qualities he could give to his canvas and to the individual subjects within the framing. The sailors made him pay for his liberty. The navy, a small, clannish, alternative lifestyle, could be very supportive of its own, but it was a hierarchic community within the aristocratic world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. On board ships, even the time was regulated by the order of the captain, who in turn set his watch by the admiral’s noon gun. Artists might be respected as superior craftsmen, and allowances made, but not every naval commander was prepared to accept that the artist’s insight was outside the chain of command. Officers who had risen through the ranks by obsessional attention to technical details of rigging, ship handling, seamanship, and tactics had difficulty putting such matters into the perspective of a painter with other technical and artistic considerations in mind. Admirals could be, as Nelson was, determined “naval gazers” eager for the enduring fame that could be obtained by a great artist who was able to satisfy the standards of the world of the arts, but they insisted that all the ropes and spars be in the right place. A significant number of artists who worked with naval subjects were sailors themselves. Dominic Serres, who died in 1793, had had a career as a merchant master, and so had Pocock, whose painting during the war years was prolific. Pocock’s second son, William Innes, served as a lieutenant in the navy. Thomas Luny probably was not a navy man, although he may well have voyaged in the navy as a passenger, but Thomas Buttersworth was an able-seaman and later a master-at-arms. William Payne had a career as an Ordnance Department draughtsman at Plymouth dockyard until 1790, when he moved to London and became a successful and fashionable drawing master. Robert Cleveley, or Clevely, appears to have had a job in a navy dockyard, like John Cleveley, his

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father, who had worked in Deptford yard, and his brother John who was also a marine painter but died in 1786. The father of another prominent artist who did some naval subjects, Joshua Christall, is believed to have been the master and owner of a merchant ship as well as owner of ship-breaking yards at Rotherhithe, Penzance, and Fowey.16 In 1809 Clarkson Stanfield was to go to sea before the mast out of Sunderland, and acquired the dubious distinction of being pressed into the navy. And in 1810 George Chambers was apprenticed to the sea in a collier out of Whitby. Naval officers had a practical need for drawing skills to make coastal views or technical drawings, and drawing was one of the skills any gentleman might be expected to develop in his spare time. Among these lesser figures in the world of naval art were officers who supplemented their navy pay by selling their sketches to a publisher who would arrange for them to be engraved and printed for sale. Lieutenants Jahleel Brenton, Thomas Yates, and Thomas Orde, and captains Mark Oates and James Weir of the Marines are all given credit for executing the drawings on which were based naval prints offered for sale in the years following the outbreak of war. Yates had left the navy before the war and had first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1788. He continued to do so until 1794. A pair of prints of hms Nymph capturing the Cleopatra, 18 June 1793, based on his drawings, are interesting because Yates was also the publisher. It is only possible to speculate why he would invest in his own rather indifferent work. One possibility is that his dedication to the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Chatham, was intended to bring his name to the attention of the Board. He had not been offered any naval employment, however, before his career was cut short in August 1796, when he was killed in a domestic dispute. Mark Oates was also the financial interest behind a pair of his own indifferent prints of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren’s action of 12 October 1798.17 De Loutherbourg, by way of contrast, was no sailor. Nor was Turner, although he was very much at home on the sea as a passenger, owned a small “yacht” on the Thames, and looked the part, being sometimes described as resembling a merchant master, or even an admiral. Turner’s compositional objectives were so entirely different from those expected and demanded by sailors that his naval canvasses, which formed a very small part of his large body of work, are much more admired at the turn of the twenty-first century than they were 200 years ago when he completed them.

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None of the artists of naval victory were women. English society was certainly receptive of female artists such as Angelica Kauffman and Anne Damer. Very few sailors, however, were women. And even for those artists who worked with naval subjects but were not themselves sailors, it was necessary to make sketches at sea from small boats, and to visit warships. It is not surprising that no woman directed her artistic attentions to the fleet, especially as portraiture was the only art likely to provide economic security, for men or for women.

 In a nation that had come to view its navy as a central icon of its selfconsciousness, the opinions of sailors were important to the connoisseur, and to the patron. Nevertheless, painters also had to conform to the values of the intelligentsia, which in some important respects were directly in conflict with those of the sailors. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy was fundamentally religious. When artists were able to raise their eyes from the terribly practical demands of society for portraits of the rich and powerful, they thought in religious terms of expressing through the particular an insight into the general and the divine. From the technique in metallurgy by which heat is used to purify an element by separating it from the dross, the word “sublime” had come to be used to describe the elevation of the mind into a higher state. In the 1790s, ideas were little changed from those expressed by Joseph Addison in the Spectator for 24 June 1712, when he had written: “The Supreme Author of our Being has so formed the Soul of Man, that nothing but Himself can be its last, adequate, and proper Happiness.” The sublime was primarily applied to paintings’ subjectivity, and appeared most strongly in history painting. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his “discourse” to the students at the Royal Academy on 10 December 1771, warned that “no subject can be proper that is not generally interesting. It ought to be either some eminent instance of heroic action or heroic suffering. There must be something either in the action, or in the object, in which men are universally concerned, and which powerfully strikes upon the public sympathy.” Such paintings must be true to nature, Reynolds continued, but, for them to serve as windows into a larger understanding of moral issues, it was necessary to eliminate any detail that would strike the viewer as being specific to a particular occasion.

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As it is required that the subject selected should be a general one, it is no less necessary that it should be kept unembarrassed with whatever may any way serve to divide the attention of the spectator … I am very ready to allow that some circumstances of minuteness and particularity frequently tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and to interest the spectator in an extraordinary manner. Such circumstances, therefore, cannot wholly be rejected: but if there be anything in the art which requires peculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute circumstantial parts; which, according to the judgement employed in the choice, becomes so useful to truth, or so injurious to grandeur.18

This was essentially a Platonist philosophy, and Reynolds’s expression of it was highly influential. In 1796 a contemporary art critic who was to torment many of the artists of naval victory, John Williams who used the nom de plume of Anthony Pasquin, echoed Reynolds when he wrote: “That candidate for renown who would wish to become great, as an history painter, must endeavour, with a sort of noble phrenzy, to leap over the barriers of humanity – he must exercise his pencil with the desires of an ambitious soul, and grasp at beautiful phantoms which he believes to be.”19 In a lecture to the Academy students in 1805 John Opie, the Academy’s Professor of Painting, again expressed this paradox. Opie, a highly successful portrait painter who had risen from very humble origins, has a tenuous claim to a place amongst the band of naval artists as a result of a letter he wrote in 1800 to the editor of the True Briton recommending a proposed public monument to the naval glory of Great Britain. In his Academy lecture he declared: “The end of painting, in its highest style, is twofold: first, the giving effect, illusion, or the true appearance of the objects to the eye; and, secondly, the combination of this with the ideal, or the conception of them in their utmost perfection, and under such an arrangement as is calculated to make the greatest possible impression on the spectator.”20 In the hands of lesser figures, the paradoxical demands could lead to the abandonment of nature. History paintings and landscapes were regarded as the visual equivalent of poetry, the highest forms of which were valued for their transcendency from the particular to the general, and to the divine. When in 1799 a group of young artists decided to form an association, known as the “Brothers,” or “Girtin’s Sketching Club,” it adopted the practice of assigning a passage of poetry every evening, which the members were

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to illustrate. Among their number were to be two marine painters, Augustus Wall Callcott and John Sell Cotman.21 Application of the Platonic notion of the ideal was not confined to pictures’ subjectivity. In the Age of Enlightenment it was inevitable that there should be attempts to systematize aesthetics, as there was in every other branch of knowledge. In 1753 William Hogarth published by subscription The Analysis of Beauty, to address, from the practical perspective of a working painter, this growing body of literature. With self-deprecatory humour, he wrote: “What! – a book, and by Hogarth! – then twenty to ten, All he gain’d by the pencil, he’ll lose by the pen.” “Perhaps it may be so, – howe’er, miss or hit, He will publish, – here goes – it’s double or quit.”22

Four years later Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish political philosopher who was later to champion the American Revolution in the House of Commons, published A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.23 Both authors were concerned with what would now be referred to as subliminal effects; the way in which different shapes and textures affect the mood of the observer. Hogarth sought to show how such figures as the serpentine line, the “Line of Beauty,” were inherent in nature. Beauty was also an effect of functionality: “When a vessel sails well, the sailors always call her a beauty; the two ideas have such a connexion.”24 These notions found expression in the work of the Italian painter Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who made studies of imaginary prisons and exploited the sinister implications of complex shapes and mysterious shadows. They found their way back to England in 1771 when Horace Walpole wrote about Piranesi’s work. The idea of the “picturesque” applied Hogarth’s and Burke’s ideas to the composition of pictures, and especially to landscape painting. The Reverend William Gilpin, Prebendary of Salisbury, focused a generation of landscape artists on the formal structure of their paintings – foreground, middle distance, and background – and he attached great importance to the selection of appropriate perspectives and cropping. He wrote about the methodic norms by which painters could lead the eye from foreground to background. He had no compunction about deviation from an honest representation of topographical detail to achieve picturesque qualities. In 1794 Sir Uvedale Price, in An Essay

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on the Picturesque as compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful, defined the characteristics of a “picturesque” landscape as containing sudden changes of texture due to irregularities, and to variety. This definition became widely accepted, but in the last years of the eighteenth century the term “picturesque” was also extended to include the exotic.25 It was undeniably difficult to compose pictures of fleet actions which gave an accurate tactical reportage and at the same time met the formal demands of the picturesque. In 1786 Gilpin had written about Shugborough Hall, the seat of Admiral Lord Anson, where he had seen the hall “adorned with the naval atchievements of Lord Anson by Samuel Scott; in which the genius of the painter has been regulated by the articles of war. The line of battle,” he continued, “is a miserable arrangement on canvas, and it is an act of inhumanity in an admiral to enjoin it. If the line of battle must be introduced, it should be formed at a distance; and the stress laid on some of the ships, and one end of the line, brought into action near the eye.”26 In May 1800 The British Magazine, reviewing the Royal Academy exhibition, noted: “The English and French squadrons engaging on the 12th of October, 1798, off Tory Island, by Serres (32), is a spirited picture, but not distinguished by peculiar circumstances from other seafights. The engagement between the St. Fiorenzo and Amelia, and three French frigates and a gun-boat, by Pocock (71), is comprised in the same observations; in fact, the merits of sea-fights are so universally similar, that we shall spare unnecessary repetitions by merely reciting the names and numbers of a few of the most important and interesting.”27 Evidently the “universality” of sea-fights was not “generally interesting.” The opinion of the critic in the Quarterly Review, writing some ten years later, was that: The only way in which such subjects can be so treated as to impress the beholder, is by taking just so much of the scene, as is within the scope of the picturesque, and in which human action and human passions may be exhibited. But when whole fleets are to be shown upon the seas, the scale to which they must be diminished brings forcibly into contrast the greatness of nature and the littleness of our greatest works. No art can overcome this difficulty, and the proudest vessel that ever rode the wave, and thundered upon its foe, becomes as mean an object as the ship of an eight day clock, keeping time with its motions to the click of the pendulum.28

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Battle painting had acquired its own conventions within those of history painting. The classic battle paintings of the French court of Louis XIV, promoted through his commissions to Charles Le Brun, focused on the Sun King himself as war leader. The propaganda value of such pictorial triumphs lay in the images of the monarch and higher aristocracy, providing a virtually superhuman direction to destiny from an almost invulnerable elevation over the heads of the common soldier. The English school learned its battle painting from France. The Duke of Marlborough, after defeating the French in the War of the Spanish succession, employed Flemish weavers to design and execute in the French manner the great “victories” tapestries at Blenheim Palace. Portraiture, which suggests individuality and human frailty, was not sought. Later in the century the Anglo-American artists Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley were to lead the way with pictures that eliminated the invulnerability of the war leader, but substituted for it an iconography that portrayed the dying war leader in the guise of Christ’s sacrifice for his people. This application of the values of the sublime to the needs of the state and of high society might well have been seen by the more pious as blasphemous. Copley broke new ground with the introduction of true portraiture in history painting, for which he was criticized by Pasquin.29 It was not until the wars of the French Republic and the French Empire that any attempt was made to apply the iconography of classic battle painting to naval subjects, even in Britain. King James II had been the only British monarch to command at sea, and only before his coronation. Admirals usually did not have social connections at court which might have led to commissions for pictures glorifying their triumphs. Although hardly a democracy, the navy was drawn from a lower level of society. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English naval painting focused instead on the ships and the fleets, working to a scale that made it impossible to represent much if anything of the human dimension, and this tradition survived intact into the nineteenth century. When Mather Brown celebrated the Battle of the Glorious First of June 1794 with a painting that adapted classical battle picture formulae to a naval subject, Lord Howe on the Deck of the Queen Charlotte, it was almost a deliberate anachronism, symbolic of aristocratic Britain’s struggle to contain the revolutionary politics of France. It was more important that British artists of the Revolutionary war, including Brown, were beginning to seek ways of representing individual sailors and marines in naval battle pictures. In the late 1780s, Joseph Wright of Derby had shown the way with a painting of The Dead Sol-

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dier, which focused on the suffering of common people, but he had not portrayed any particular person. De Loutherbourg’s pictures of actions ashore departed from the French formula of a composition dominated by the commanding officers, by putting the commanders in the midst of private sentinels who competed for attention. When he painted his own version of Earl Howe’s Victory over the French Fleet, June 1, 1794 he started a trend toward taking individual portraits of ordinary seamen. His finished canvas was a picture of ships and of fleets, but the human tragedy was suggested by men struggling in the water. As the war advanced, increasing attention was to be paid to the ordinary sailor, and marine, notably by Samuel Drummond. It was a tall order for an artist to have to meet in any one picture the sailorly values of representation, both of ships and of fleet tactics, the aesthetic values of the picturesque, the philosophic value of the sublime, and the social values of his patrons. In the first volume of the Naval Chronicle, which began publication on the wave of public enthusiasm for the navy following the Battle of the Nile, there appeared an article on “Marine Scenery” that concluded with a list of marine and naval paintings in the 1799 Exhibition at the Royal Academy, and with the request that their creators be treated with consideration: We take this opportunity to request the various tribe of Diletanti, Counoisseurs, and Amateurs, who criticise the labours of men of genius, in this line, to remember – that Marine Painting is at present in its infancy in this country; that this noble branch of the art is cramped, and greatly confined to portraits of particular ships, or correct representations of particular actions, which forbid the artist from indulging in the fine rolling phrenzy of imagination: and we also request These Gentlemen to consider that all who are unacquainted with the intricate anatomy of ships, or the various magnificence of the Ocean, are ill qualified duly to appreciate the labours of the Marine Painter, who moves in a space of peculiar Grandure, and Sublimity.30

This appeal was not much attended to, either by the sailors or by the aesthetes.

 At the end of the eighteenth century, as in the present day, the work of artists was heavily influenced by the structure of their society, which affected the transmission of ideas, and commercial prospects. Until the

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middle of the century there had been practically no public access to collections of paintings. The puritan rebellion in the previous century had led to the destruction of images in the churches, and even at the end of the eighteenth century the church was reluctant to risk the “Roman Seductions” of the arts. The first public gallery did not come into existence until the 1740s when Hogarth, who was one of the governors of Captain Coram’s new Foundling Hospital, donated a portrait of the founder. Other artists followed suit, both as a charitable act and in order to exhibit their talents. The British Museum was founded in 1753, and started its collection with Sir Hans Sloane’s “Cabinet of Curiosities,” which had been begun in the previous century. The crown jewel of the British Museum’s collection, the Phidias frieze from the Parthenon in Athens, was first brought to England by Lord Elgin between 1802 and 1812 to preserve it from the Turks, who were using the marble sculptures to make cement. The National Gallery was not to be established until 1824, at 100 Pall Mall, and it was not until 1829 that a National Gallery of Marine Paintings was opened in the Greenwich Naval Hospital. The great private art collections were open only to the very privileged. Sometimes paintings could be seen at the auction houses before sale, at Sotheby’s after 1744 and Christie’s after 1762. The difficulty of seeing paintings, and of selling them, began to be addressed in 1760, when the newly formed Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in Great Britain began to hold annual exhibitions. In 1768 the Royal Academy was founded by King George III with Reynolds as its first president. The king’s idea, apparently, was that the Academy should establish history painting as a vehicle for support of the crown, similar to the French Academy. However, the Royal Academy was not maintained by public funds, or from the King’s privy purse. It depended on the entrance fees from the annual exhibition, and was self-governing. Membership was by election and limited to forty, and applicants had first to be elected as associates. This limitation was intended to ensure a commercial edge for the privileged. In 1780 the Academy gallery had been moved from premises on Pall Mall to Somerset House on the Strand, where it used the rooms presently occupied by the Courtauld Gallery. There an annual exhibition was mounted, with the most important paintings being closely crowded into the “Great Room.” The placement of the pictures – their height from the floor and their relationship to other striking works of art – was in the hands of the hanging committee, with whom it was well for an artist to be on good terms.31

Charles Bestland, stipple engraved group portrait of the Royal Academicians, after Henry Singleton, published 1802 (1795), 25⅜⬙ ⫻ 31¾⬙ npg d10716. Joseph Farington is in the foreground on the right leaning on the frame of a painting, John Singleton Copley is standing left of him holding a walking stick, Benjamin West is seated in the centre behind the table, wearing a tricorn hat, Thomas Sandby is in the foreground on the left, seated in a dark coat holding a picture, and Sir Thomas Lawrence is seated further left, twisted to show his profile, not really looking at the picture on the floor. William Hodges is seated on the far left behind Lawrence’s shoulder, with James Wyatt standing between their heads, and George Dance right of Lawrence’s head, with Sir William Beechey looking slightly furtive to his right and behind Thomas Sandby’s shoulder. At the back, just to the right of West’s chair, Paul Sandby’s head is visible. Richard Westall is in the centre of the group standing with their backs against the classical statue. Right of him and slightly lower are Robert Smirke and John Opie close to Farington’s head. James Northcote is the man seated between Copley and Farington, and standing at the back on the far right are Thomas Banks and John Hoppner.

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By the outbreak of war, Joseph Farington had become a powerful man in the Academy. He had been elected an associate in 1783, and a full member two years later when he deposited A Coast Scene as his Diploma work. James Northcote, a fellow academician, is quoted as saying, caustically: “How Farington used to rule the Academy! He was the great man to be looked up to on all occasions; all applicants must gain their point through him. But he was no painter; he cared nothing at all about pictures; his great passion was the love of power – he loved to rule. He did it, of course, with considerable dignity: but he had an untamable spirit, which, I suppose, was due to the fact that he had lost the game as a painter, and that it was too late to mend the matter.”32 Edward Dayes, a fellow artist, wrote in his Professional Sketches of Modern Artists that Farington showed “but a callow capacity, when he draws upon the stock of his own ideas. When an artist gives a representation of some local spot, we feel obliged by his extending our topographical knowledge; but if, in his fancy pictures, we are ever presented with common-place stuff, such as might ouze out of any futile pate, we feel disgusted, and turn away dissatisfied, and uninformed.”33 But whatever his limitations as a painter, we must be grateful for Farington’s perseverance in keeping a detailed diary of his professional life during the war years. In it he recorded the visits made to him by young painters of the calibre of Constable and Turner, who hoped for support in the competition for election as an associate or member of the Academy. The diary is also invaluable for Farington’s own observations on the world of artists, and especially of the artists of naval victory.34 Joseph Farington had a brother who was a captain in the East India Company, and a cousin and a nephew who were officers in the navy, which may explain his interest in naval affairs. The cousin, William Bissell, got into trouble early in the war, was dismissed, and found himself in the Marshalsea Prison, but with the help of Farington’s lobbying, he was reinstated in his lieutenant’s rank and even given a job. Farington also lobbied on behalf of the son of his eldest brother, William, also named William, with the result that on 23 October 1799 he was commissioned lieutenant and given a job on hms Plover.35 Even apart from the family association, with so much depending for Britons on the Royal Navy, an interest in its success or failure was natural. Besides providing exhibition space, the Academy was a school where young painters studied the works of the masters, attended lectures, and sketched models from life. Reynolds, in his “First Discourse” to the stu-

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dents at the Academy on 2 January 1769, wrote: “The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides furnishing able men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the great examples of the art. These are the materials on which genius is to work, and without which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or deviously employed. By studying these authentic models, that idea of excellence which is the result of the accumulated experience of past ages may be at once acquired.” From study of the masters, rules of painting could be learned: “It may be laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his own sense, has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them. Every opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that false and vulgar opinion, that rules are the fetters of genius: they are fetters only to men of no genius.” Nearly five years later, on 10 December 1774, he added: “It is vain for Painters or Poets to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work, and from which invention must originate. Nothing can come of nothing.”36 Over forty years later the history painter manqué, Robert Haydon, expressed the same faith: “No man can add to the stock of knowledge but by imitating others; keep the same road, proceed on the great principles on which they proceeded, the principles of truth and Nature, and you may proceed further, you may carry them to a greater extent [than] those who, fatigued with the difficulties of the great road, caper off in the bye paths or attempt to attract attention by cutting little roads where sound minds would disdain to cut them.”37 The works of the Dutch, especially of the William Van de Veldes, father and son, were the dominant influence on Academy teaching of marine painting. Their work together caught the technical marine detail, and the subtleties of light on the sea, which made their body of painting the standard for later performance. The nineteenth-century artist and author John Ruskin was a very exceptional critic, both of Academic teaching in general and of using the Van de Veldes as models. In his great apologia for Turner’s painting, which he fleshed out and published as Modern Painters, he wrote: “I know that Turner once liked Vandevelde.” “I can trace the evil influence of Vandevelde on most of his early sea paintings,” Ruskin continued. He was forced to admit, however, that “Turner certainly could not have liked Vandevelde without some legitimate cause.”38 The French Revolution put a strain on the Academy. Youth in Britain was affected by the revolutionary rejection of authority, and this could

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be reflected in their attitude to the old masters and in their selection of subjects. It was important to the British establishment that the concept of the “sublime” should not be associated with revolutionary, or “democratical,” ideas. The German Sturm und Drang literary movement of the 1770s and 1780s which had had a subjective focus not unlike the idea of the “sublime,” had been both pantheistic and revolutionary. King George became concerned that Benjamin West, who had succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy in 1792, could not be relied on to support the monarchy. The king had supported West’s work in a very practical way with a pension of £1,000 a year since 1768, and his support was not affected by the sympathy that West, who had been born in Pennsylvania, had expressed for the American Revolution. West’s sympathy for France, however, was much more threatening. When he visited Paris during the Peace of Amiens in 1802, he was lionized by French society and met Napoleon. The king’s mental illness contributed to this concern, and in 1804 an attempt was made to replace West by encouraging the election of the architect James Wyatt as president. This was not successful at the time, and Robert Smirke, who had contributed to the arts of naval victory with striking commemorative plates but who made no secret of his democratic opinions, was elected Keeper.39 But the king refused to confirm the appointment, West’s pension was stopped in 1805, and he was ordered to stop his work at Windsor Castle. Bowing to the pressure, he refused to stand and Wyatt was elected president. Farington’s opinion was that West did not have “an English mind & is kept to this Country only by the Income He receives from the King, & by His Sons having married here.”40 However, in 1806 the voting was again for West, who then continued in the office until his death in 1820, when he was succeeded by Sir Thomas Lawrence.41 West’s paintings commemorating Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 may have been stimulated by his need to restore his relationship with the establishment. Concern that art could become a vehicle for social protest was to ruin one of the naval artist within the first year of the war. William Hodges is best known for his work as the official Admiralty landscape artist on Captain James Cook’s 1772 voyage to the Pacific. In 1793 Hodges’s fortunes were low, and in an attempt to revive a failing career he took up the idea of “didactic landscape.” This essay into moral values was to be launched with two paintings, The Effects of Peace and The Consequences of War. Along with twenty-three other pictures, these were exhibited in a room in Old Bond Street, and introduced with an

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Benjamin Robert Haydon, self-portrait, oil on millboard, c. 1845, npg 268.

artist’s statement. In it he wrote that he had found “in the ancient and many of the modern masters of landscape, the greatest combinations of nature, and the most exact similitude, the happiest composition, and pencilling governed by the hand of Truth. But I confess there seemed very rarely to me any moral purpose in the mind of the artist.” This complaint preceded John Ruskin’s that “Landscape art has never taught us one deep or holy lesson” by half a century.42 Hodges’ efforts, however, led to disaster. Edward Edwards, who was an Associate of the Royal Academy and its Professor of Perspective, wrote in his Anecdotes of Painters: “Although it is by no means the wish of the author to be guilty of ill-natured criticism, yet he cannot forbear saying,

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that these two pictures were in their execution scarcely above mediocrity.” Both have disappeared, so there is no way of confirming that judgment. Be that as it may, society might have forgiven a mediocrity of execution, but not the moral purpose. The show received very little attention until the cartoonist James Gillray produced a print entitled The Blessings of Peace and the Curses of War in January 1795, probably inspired by Hodges’ example. Although the prints are almost anodyne, Gillray’s challenge could not be ignored. According to Edwards’s account: The Duke of York and the Prince of Gloucester visited the room [where Hodges was exhibiting his pictures]; and his Royal Highness, upon seeing the pictures, very pertinently observed, that he thought no artist should employ himself on works of that kind, the effects of which might tend to impress the mind of the inferior classes of society with sentiments not suited to the public tranquillity; that the effects of war were at all times to be deplored, and therefore need not be exemplified in a way which could only serve to increase public clamour, without redressing the evil.43

Farington, who was a friend of Hodges, wrote that he was very discouraged by the duke’s supposition that he harboured “Democratic principles.”44 The royal duke’s disapproval destroyed any hope Hodges had of making sales, and he abandoned his career altogether, turning his hand to banking. The great paintings of the eighteenth century were all works in oil paint on canvas. Watercolour had only been used to tint pencil drawings, often for technical drawing or for private use, and it was not until the last decade that artists of the quality of Thomas Girtin and J.M.W. Turner began to use the medium in its own right with its own potential to create exhibition pieces. The Royal Academy bylaws required an annual exhibition of works of paintings, sculpture, and designs, but work in watercolour could be dismissed as mere drawing and tended to be crowded into the corners of the exhibition space at Somerset House. It was not until 1943 that an artist was elected an associate of the academy on the basis of work in watercolour. “Girtin’s Sketching Club” members worked primarily in watercolour, and in 1804, two years after Girtin’s death, they decided to form the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, which was to become known as the “Old” Water Colour Society. The original committee included Pocock and William Gilpin, the landscape guru, who was elected the first pres-

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ident.45 By the rules then in force at the Royal Academy, members and associates could not be members of any other society of artists. The Society of Painters in Water-Colours thus became a rival organization, and one under critical attack by such as Sir George Beaumont. Beaumont was Farington’s contemporary, a fellow academician, and a devoted patron of artists. He and his wife were to become close friends of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Constable, but he was very conservative in his tastes. His most treasured possession was a small painting by Claude Gellée of Hagar and the Angel, which travelled with him wherever he went.46 Membership in the Society of Painters in Water-Colours was limited to twenty-two. This was intended to ensure that standards were kept high, but the limitation became a means of ensuring a commercial advantage for those who had succeeded in acquiring membership. This led to the formation in 1807 of the New Society of Painters in Miniature and Water-Colours, which soon changed its name to The Associated Artists (changed again in 1810 to Painters) in Water-Colours. Its membership was to include John Sell Cotman, whose rejection by the “old” WaterColour Society the previous year had led to his rusticating himself to Norwich. The early economic success of these societies was not sustained, and in 1812 the Association went out of existence. But it was restructured, and thereafter managed to establish itself. Antony Vandyke Copley Fielding was elected president in 1831, and in 1881 Queen Victoria was to grant it the name of Royal.47 In 1832 the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours was formed under the patronage of Queen Adelaide, with open membership, later adding to the confusion by changing its name to the Associated Artists in Water-Colours. The outbreak of war in 1793 brought to London what might be considered the first travelling exhibition, when part of the collection of the Duc d’Orléans, consisting of Flemish, Dutch, and German paintings, was exhibited for sale at rooms in Pall Mall recently vacated by the Royal Academy. A shilling a head was charged, and over £100 a day was taken in from people eager to view the old masters. In December 1798 French and Italian pictures were similarly shown, by three private collectors who had purchased what they themselves wanted, hoping to dispose of the rest.48 In March 1799 another show opened in the “Great Room” in Whitcomb Street of paintings purchased from “the palaces of many of the first nobility” in Rome. In the introduction to his catalogue, the anonymous “proprietor” wrote:

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His situation at Rome, during the troubles which lately agitated that part of Italy, afforded him easy access to the galleries of the nobility, and a confidence with them, which nothing but the disturbed state of the country could have procured him. Profiting by the offers which were made to him, he was enabled to enrich his Collection with many of the finest productions of the greatest masters. It may easily be conceived, that, when the French army was advancing with hasty strides towards Rome, every person who had property to dispose of was anxious to convert any part of it into the specie of the country, where the transaction could be done with secrecy.49

He concluded with a plea for the establishment of a National Gallery, which was all the more needed now that young English artists could not travel to Italy. Because of the limited public opportunity for artists to bring their work to the attention of buyers, it was usual for connoisseurs to visit artists’ studios. A real need existed for permanent exhibition space, and in 1806 the British Institution for the Encouragement of British Artists was established by “the Amateurs of England, the Nobility and Gentry” to encourage patronage and especially to counteract “anti-British prejudices.” The chaotic life of John Thomas Serres played a role in its creation. The flood of European masters into the London art market made it all the more necessary to provide some support for British painters. The British Institution provided an exhibition room open year round, with a mandate to overcome the dominant position in the art market commanded by foreign artists. It was well endowed from the beginning by some of the greatest art collectors, including John Julius Angerstein, whose personal collection was to be the nucleus of the collection at the National Gallery, and it used some of this money to award prizes for paintings, and sometimes to commission works for presentation to public collections. In 1824 it was to offer prizes for sketches of the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar, which produced a flurry of activity among the artists of naval victory. Apart from its support of contemporary artists, whose works it exhibited for sale without commission, the British Institution had an annual exhibition of Old Masters, which it permitted students to copy, and it broke new ground in 1813 with a retrospective exhibition of Reynolds’s paintings.50 In 1823 the Society of British Artists was also formed, with the purpose of providing another venue for exhibiting pictures for sale.

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Admission to art exhibitions was charged in order to discourage the rough element who liked to turn any free event into a circus. It was also found to be very profitable. The American artist John Singleton Copley had been the first to realize that he could make a good return from exhibiting single pictures of topical subjects. When in 1783 he was commissioned by the Corporation of London to paint a picture of The Repulse and Defeat of the Spanish Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, measuring 25 by 18 feet, he agreed to the relatively small sum of £1,000 with the understanding that he would be able to realize a great deal more through exhibition charges. A thousand pounds was a very large price for a single painting by contemporary standards, but a painting of that size involved several years of work and expensive materials. Copley showed it in a tent in Green Park at a shilling a head, and later told his friend Nathaniel Marchant that sixty thousand people had paid.51 Exhibition of recent work was also intended to stimulate interest in subscription sales of engraved reproductions. Print dealers hung pictures and prints in their windows, and sold copies to the general public with a few pounds to lay out on art. It was principally through the medium of prints that the arts of naval victory were seen by the populace. Newspaper reviews of the Academy exhibitions, and of the work artists exhibited themselves, were an important part of the mechanism that kept society and the arts in touch. Williams (Pasquin) was the most outspoken of the critics, as Angelo tells us, “He was originally brought up to the profession of an engraver; but making no progress in calcography, threw aside the sand-bag, copper, and graving tool, and taking up the pen, commenced the more idle, and far less reputable, profession of a satirical scribbler.”52 He accused Williams of blackmailing performers and artists, dining regularly at their tables and at their expense: “Though a poet who was dreaded by many … on account of his critiques in the papers, yet he contrived to keep friends with all, hinting, that pay might keep his pen silent.”53 As a fencing master under bond to keep the peace, Angelo could not be provoked into “meeting” Williams, but he turned the tables on him by bringing him before a magistrate. It was not until March 1807 that Prince Hoare established the first journal dedicated to the arts. The Artist was supported by several important painters and by the British Institution. It started out bravely printing weekly numbers, but it survived only to August of that year. A contemporary, William Paulet Carey, wrote:

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The Printers and Publishers in London, at that period, knew by experience, that publications on the Fine Arts must be a certain loss, owing to the fact, that not one in ten thousand felt any interest in the subject, and that the Artists, in no instance, had ever made an effort to support a publication for the advancement of their profession. But notwithstanding this hopeless prospect, another desperate attempt was made to obtain encouragement for a quarterly publication on the Fine Arts, under the title of The Review of Publications of Art, meaning published engravings and the exhibitions. The first number was published in London, March 1 1808; but after a few numbers, this trial, although ably supported by the pen of the elder Landseer, [i.e., John] was abandoned through a want of purchases.54

 Copley’s financial success during the years of his prime was not unique. Reynolds and Opie became wealthy from their work. Portrait painters could command a financial return from their clients which was not necessarily available to history and landscape painters. De Loutherbourg only obtained financial security through his work in the theatre. But West became wealthy through the royal patronage of his history paintings. And Turner was to become a very wealthy man on the basis of increasingly controversial landscape painting, because he was able to connect with some of the richest patrons in England. The road to the top could be a stony one. In 1805 Opie warned Academy students that only an obsessive drive to excellence could justify a career in the arts: Should any … happen to be present who has taken up the art on the supposition of finding it an easy and amusing employment – any one who has been sent into the Academy by his friends, on the idea that he may cheaply acquire an honourable and profitable profession – any one … who hopes by it to get rid of what he thinks a more vulgar and disagreeable situation, to escape confinement at the counter or the desk – any one lured merely by vanity or interest, or, in short, impelled by any consideration but a real and unconquerable passion for excellence; – let him drop it at once and avoid these walls and every thing connected with them as he would the pestilence; for if he have not this unquenchable liking, in addition to all the requisites above enumberated, he may pine in indigence, or skulk through life as a hackney likeness-taker, a copier, a drawing master or pattern drawer to young ladies, or he may turn picture-cleaner, and help Time to destroy excellencies which he cannot rival

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– but he must never hope to be, in the proper sense of the word, a painter.

He later added that British painting had by then “become the first school … in Europe, on the mere scraps, offals, and dog’s meat of patronage, afforded by hungry speculators, or falling by chance from the old master’s tables.”55 Young artists found work colouring in the engravings and etchings produced by printsellers. Turner was one of many who supported himself in early life by this very humble task. Some struggling artists found positions in the entourage of wealthy travellers who employed them as later generations were to use their digital cameras, to take snapshot sketches of the sights they visited. One of the redeeming features of such work for the artists concerned was the ability it gave them to see other parts of the world – and the works of foreign painters. William Daniell, Turner, and Thomas Girtin were each offered a post in Lord Elgin’s expedition to view the ruins of Athens, but rejected it. The work was to include providing assistance to Lady Elgin in decorating firescreens.56 John Sell Cotman devoted much of his working life to producing architectural engravings for Dawson Turner, a wealthy banker. Work painting scenes for theatrical productions was open to artists needing to find gainful employment, and many turned to scene painting in their early years before they were able to establish themselves by the exhibition of paintings at the Royal Academy or the Society of British Artists. De Loutherbourg had a very successful career in the theatre before turning to the role of war artist in his old age. Scene painting, however, was regarded as being somewhat inconsistent with the standards demanded of serious artists, because it called for different handling of detail, colour, and composition. Clarkson Stanfield, who turned to the arts because he was on the beach, and George Chambers, whose early life in the mercantile marine had been particularly brutal, both worked in the theatre before establishing themselves as professional easel painters. When Stanfield no longer needed to work in the theatre, his friends advised him to break his connections in order to earn greater respect as an artist. Nevertheless, he continued to volunteer his labour to help his friend Charles Dickens with the theatrical productions he undertook. Being elected first an associate, and then a fellow of the Royal Academy was important if a painter was to obtain financial security. For those who never obtained election to the Academy or to one of the art societies, circumstances could be difficult.

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One young American who travelled to London to study painting, Robert Fulton, assessed his own abilities and the conditions he saw, and decided instead to become an engineer. In 1803 Benjamin West passed on the report to Farington that after seven years’ working in France Fulton had developed a “diving boat. He had one made at Brest by order of the French Government.” Four years later West told Farington that he had received a letter from Fulton at New York, who informed him: “he has invented & established a Passage Boat to be navigated by Steam only. It goes to Albany twice a week.”57 However, artists who specialized in marine and naval subjects could expect to improve their circumstances because there was a demand for their work, especially among naval officers. Thomas Luny, despite a serious disability, earned a very substantial income from painting, and specializing in marine and naval subjects. John Thomas Serres made very considerable sums with his painting, which were dissipated by the irresponsibility of his wife. Nicholas Pocock and George Chambers both turned to the arts from a life at sea, because they longed to express themselves by painting the ships they knew so well, and both improved themselves financially and were able to support their families.

 Art education was not the exclusive domain of the Royal Academy. At least one of the artists of naval victory, James Pattison Cockburn, obtained his art training at the Woolwich Academy, which was run for the army by the Board of Ordnance. The army needed officers who could record terrain form, and especially the design of fortifications. No doubt, the army also valued the capacity of art education to train soldiers to observe accurately. During the period of the naval conflict with the French Republic and Empire, art instruction at Woolwich was in the very capable hands of the Sandby family. In August 1768 Paul Sandby had been appointed Chief Drawing Master with a salary of £100 per annum, and when in January 1797 he retired, his place was taken by his brother Thomas. The art curriculum in 1792 laid down that, after basic instruction from the Second and Assistant masters, students worked with Sandby: “Putting Perspective in Practice by copying from Drawings, which qualifies them for Drawing from nature; teaches them the effect of light and shade; and makes them acquainted also with Aerial Perspective. Then [cadets are] to proceed to take views about Woolwich

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and other places; which teaches them to break ground, and forms the eye to the knowledge of it.”58 The Academy regulations of 1797 recognized that few of the students could be made into artists, but that all could profit from the lessons: “As Drawing is an accomplishment which depends in a great measure upon genius, it is not to be expected that every Gentleman Cadet should become an expert draftsman … But … it will not be denied that they can all if they please, endeavour to learn … and therefore it is intended strictly to require certificates of diligence from the Drawing-Master … previous to the recommendation of any Cadet for a Commission.”59 The Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth, known simply but confusingly as the “Royal Academy,” dated back to 1729. Its curriculum was very strongly focused on mathematics, but there was provision for a drawing master with a salary, set in 1736 at £100 per annum. In the “Articles and Orders Relative to the Royal Academy Established in His Majesty’s Dockyard at Portsmouth for Educating Young Gentlemen to the Sea Service,” rule 32 stipulated that, when they were sent to sea for practical experience, “the Captain [should] oblige the volunteers to keep Journals, and to draw the appearances of Head Lands, Coasts, Bays and such like.”60 Such “views” could be used at a later time to help officers of the watch identify scraps of coastline that might be seen through gaps in a rain squall. Merchant seamen were accustomed to undertaking such drawings, and naval officers had a particular need of them for inshore operations against the enemy. Hand-drawn views are still regarded as of unique value, even though new technologies have tended to displace them from these more mundane roles. The limitation of the camera is that it records without comprehension, giving equal value to the trivial and the significant. It is incapable of imitating the process of human perception, which attributes value to everything it “sees” and passes that valuation to the cognitive part of the brain. The artist’s capacity to evaluate visual stimuli is the basis of his craft. Only electronic means of navigation, and especially satellite navigation systems, have made such visual fixes of the coastline dispensable. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they were essential, and the work of drawing coastal views was an important part of the arts of naval victory. Naval officers also needed drawing skills in order to report intelligence observations such as coastal fortifications, or the exotic flora and fauna seen on voyages of discovery. Apparently none of the artists of naval victory were graduates of the naval academy, which in 1801 the First Lord, the Earl of St Vincent,

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described as “a sink of vice and abomination.” However, four fair copy text books of the Academy curriculum, which survive at the Admiralty Library and the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, ensure it a role in the story of the arts of naval victory. The oldest book, dating from 1752, includes a section on perspective but it is couched in highly mechanical terms of little value to the drawing of landscape. There is no mention made of aerial perspective or the use of light and shade. The curriculum was much more interested in the requirements of coastal surveying, and by the 1770s the section on perspective had been eliminated. That art continued to have a role in the Royal Naval Academy, however, is apparent from the very high quality of the technical drawing in the text books, and their embellishment with pen and ink, ink wash, and even water colour pictures primarily of naval scenes. One particularly attractive picture from about 1807 shows cadets in uniform sitting on very large anchors arranged on the lawn in front of the academy building, which is now the officer’s mess in Portsmouth dockyard. As there is a close resemblance between the pictures in the latter three books, it is to be supposed that one of the drawing masters supplemented his income by preparing text books, not only to satisfy academy requirements but also to serve as souvenirs.61 The military academies provided employment for several of the better-known naval artists. John Thomas Serres was employed at the private Maritime School in Chelsea, which first opened its doors in Ormond House, Paradise Row, Chelsea, in 1779 only to close them again in 1787 and reopen as a Naval Academy.62 Another who was to figure briefly among the artist of naval victory, John Constable, narrowly avoided a position in 1802 as drawing master at the Royal Military Academy in Great Marlow, which was eventually to become rma Sandhurst. He felt that the job would have destroyed him as an artist. Richard Livesay was appointed drawing master at the Royal Naval Academy in 1796. It was to close its doors in 1806, but St Vincent had recommended that it be restructured along the lines of the Academy in Great Marlow, and Admiral Barham, the First Lord at the time of Trafalgar, agreed. It reopened in 1808 as the Royal Naval College under the command of the mathematician the Reverend James Inman, and in 1811 John Christian Schetky took up the post of drawing master.63 Perhaps Constable’s relief at having escaped the degradation of a drawing master’s post was the over-reaction of a conceited man, but the

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life could certainly be a hard one with small reward. Some time after Paul Sandby’s death in 1809, for example, his brother Thomas drafted a petition to the king asking for help for the indigent artist’s family: “Your memoralist has a son married to the second daughter of his brother Paul Sandby, for upwards of 50 years he trusts a true, zealous, & faithful servant to the crown, who died so poor that althou his past debts have been paid scarce anything remaind to supply the want of any part of the family. That the marriage produced many children.”64

 Inevitably there was competition among the artists of naval victory for recognition and financial success, but the world of the arts in the days before photography could be more cooperative than is the norm in the modern world. Farington and Robert Smirke cooperated on several figure pictures, in which Smirke did the actual figures. It also appears likely that Farington had help with the ships in his dockyard paintings. Turner asked John Christian Schetky to sketch hms Victory for him because Schetky was working in Portsmouth where she was lying. Schetky asked Stanfield to paint in the clouds of a picture he was completing, because he recognized Stanfield’s superiority in that aspect of the task. Thomas Daniell and his nephew William worked together on engraving plates, as did John Sell Cotman and his son Miles. De Loutherbourg and Stanfield copied their own work so that they could sell to more than one patron. Artists who had been trained at the Academy to copy the methods of the older masters were less shy about copying each other’s compositions. Before the invention of photography, it was not a winner-take-all world, because there was a tremendous demand for handmade images. Engravers served this general demand by copying the works of others, but they were also artists in their own right. Some of them painted their own pictures before making engravings from them. When working with an image painted by another, it was recognized that they had considerable license to alter the image to meet their own purposes. Art reproduction was akin to musical performance in that each performer’s interpretation could differ considerably, and be valued for that uniqueness. One result of this approach to reproduction was that the same image might by copied by several different engravers who considered it

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worth their while to devote months of work to the subject because the buying public would be as willing to purchase a new and perhaps better interpretation as a modern public would be to purchase a new recording of a familiar piece of music. When in 1878 Ruskin exhibited his collection of Turner drawings and engravings at the Fine Art Society, he commented in the catalogue that “by a coincidence which may in truth be termed little short of miraculous, Turner and the English school of line engravers were contemporaneous. Had Turner appeared on the scene a score of years earlier, he would have passed the prime of life before he could have found an engraver capable of reproducing his work.”65 The work of all the artists of naval victory benefited by the high state of the engravers’ art at the end of the eighteenth century. But in the Georgian world craftsmen were not well rewarded for their labours, and engravers were no exception. Ruskin inserted into the catalogue a description of the engraver’s art – and hardships – by “One who has had many opportunities of watching and estimating engravers’ work”: I should like to say one word for engraving and its difficulties; that is, in rendering colour into black and white. Take a picture or drawing by Turner in his later time. First, a reduction has to be made to a scale. The original may be full of the most delicate architectural work, crowded perhaps with figures, all, at first glance, a shapeless mass, but all requiring for the engraver’s purpose, to be put into order, and to be submitted to Turner’s critical eye. When the plate gets well into progress then comes the question of colour; a bit of bright orange, or scarlet, or blue – how shall it be rendered, in black, or white, or grey? Turner knows, but the engraver dare not ask him until the plate is in such a condition as to require touching. I have seen engravers perfectly bewildered as to what they should do in such cases. All who have studied Turner’s work will feel the immense difficulty in translating them into black and white, remembering that during the painter’s life each plate had to go through the ordeal of his examination, his criticism, and his alterations … And yet with such qualities necessary to the Art, few men have more lacked the sympathy and appreciation of the public than engravers, few men have been less known, few have lived more solitary or more laborious lives. Bending double all through the bright sunny day, in an attic or close work-room, over a large steel plate, with a powerful magnifying glass in constant use; carefully picking and cutting out bits of metal from the plate, and giving the painfully formed lines the ultimate form of Turner’s most brilliant conceptions, work-

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ing for twelve or fourteen hours daily, taking exercise rarely, in early morning or late at night, proving a plate only to find that days of labour have been mistaken, and have to be effaced and done over again; criticised and corrected by painters who often look upon engravers, to whom they owe so much, as inferior to themselves; and treated with indifference by the public.66

Prior to the 1820s, the work would have been on a copper plate, which took an impression more easily but had to be constantly repaired. (A description of the techniques employed in print making has been put into an appendix.) Some of the engraving work was done for the Admiralty. Navigational charts were an essential part of the work of the artists of naval victory, but it was only in 1795 that Alexander Dalrymple, the hydrographer of the East India Company, was entrusted with establishing an Admiralty Hydrographic Office.67 By 1807 three engravers worked for him, labouring on the copper engraving plates from which the charts would be struck. Something of the conditions in a print shop can be known because one of the Admiralty’s engravers, John Cooke, applied repeatedly for a raise in his pay, but instead was dismissed for carrying a portfolio out of the office. There can be no question, considering the importance of his work and the fact that he had virtually on his own initiative created a modern hydrographic service, that Dalrymple earned the £1,500 per year he was being paid or allowed to make from private sales. But Cooke’s annual pay of £136.10 was scarcely generous, and the social relationship between master and man in what was a very small office was evidently unattractive and bureaucratic.68 Dalrymple was himself forced to resign in June 1808. According to Joseph Farington’s record of a conversation with William Marsden who had been the Secretary to the Admiralty from 1804 to 1807, the reason was Dalrymple’s rudeness to the First Lord, Lord Mulgrave, which was “excessive”: “It became from his perverseness necessary to remove him from his situation. He was offered a pension which He refused. His obstinacy affected His own spirits and killed him.”69 Engraving work undertaken by self-employed artists could be as badly paid, and much less secure. In August 1811 the engraver John Pye was to complain to Farington about the unprofitability of his contract work for the Admiralty. Pye said that “a plate which He had engraved for the Admiralty from a drawing by William Westall had taken Him three months to execute, & He had only 60 guineas for it.” The following

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year he obtained a contract to engrave plates for Sir Joseph Banks, who had accompanied Captain Cook to the Pacific in 1768–71 as botanist. For this work the Admiralty paid him £45 guineas per plate, which was £10 guineas more than was being paid by Cadell and Davis the printers.70 William Westall had himself been employed by the Admiralty to paint the “views” which Pye engraved, and John Thomas Serres had earlier been employed in a similar way. Work for the printsellers and publishers was not always more profitable. Thomas and William Daniell, however, made aquatint prints into a very fine art, and flourished. In 1808 William Daniell calculated that since his marriage in 1801 he had been able to save £2,000, of which he had loaned £505 to his brother-in-law and fellow artist, Richard Westall. This was a comfortable situation for an artist, and indicates how well he was viewed in his profession. The previous year he had told Farington that he had been paid £200 for engraving twenty plates, which he had been able to finish in six weeks. But his income depended on his putting money out for the publication of his books of prints, and he told Farington in early 1809 that his return for a book on Animated Nature might not be any more than his commitment of £1,600 to the printers Cadell and Davis. “He saw the necessity,” Farington noted, “of being connected with Booksellers so obvious that in the work he is preparing with his uncle, viz: “Their travels in India” [Picturesque Voyage] they mean to engage with some Bookseller for the publication of it & to have a concern in it.”71 John Boydell was an exceptional engraver who profited greatly by making himself into a print dealer. Beginning by importing prints from the continent, he raised the quality of British printmaking to such an extent that before the outbreak of war he had established a thriving export market. In 1782 he had been elected an alderman, and in 1790 Lord Mayor of London. He was generous in his use of his money, commissioning painters to contribute to such projects as the illustration of the works of Shakespeare, and engravers to realize them. Northcote wrote after Boydell’s death that he had done “more for the advancement of the Arts in England than the whole mass of nobility put together.”72 Robert Haydon was less complimentary, but his view was embittered by his limitations as an artist. Aldous Huxley observed in his introduction to Haydon’s autobiography that “the one gift which nature had quite obviously denied him was the gift of expressing himself in form and colour. One has only to glace at one of Haydon’s drawings to perceive

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that the man had absolutely no artistic talent.” But he had a fine capacity as an author, and used it to express his conviction that the world of arts was fundamentally corrupt: “The Shakespear Gallery was a commercial speculation and had nothing to do with enlightened Patronage. – Nothing in this Country is ventured on without anticipating remuneration – the expence must be cleared by a Set of Prints – or by the shillings of an exhibition!! If Pericles had so calculated before Phidias was employed, the Parthenon would never have lifted its lofty head.”73 That is hardly a fair criticism of a self-made man who made it possible for many artists to earn their living. Joseph Farington and his brother George had as young men been employed for three years by Boydell painting watercolour copies of the pictures at the Earl of Orford’s home at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for the purpose of making engravings.

 Although there were exceptions, such as Turner and Boydell, for many artists – and authors – the danger was very great that debts they could not settle would lead to their being committed to prison. Dickens intended no irony when he dedicated to Stanfield his novel Little Dorrit, which is set in and around the Marshalsea Prison. Neither was in fact ever reduced to that degradation. Dickens’s father had been, however, and as author and as artist Dickens and Stanfield were both aware of the shades of the prison house. Serres died in prison for debts incurred by his wife, and William Combe wrote his verses for Thomas Rowlandson’s lampoon on artistic values, Dr. Syntax in Pursuit of the Picturesque, while in the King’s Bench Prison.74 Conditions in prison varied considerably. Farington noted in his diary the circumstances of the imprisonment of the son of William Woollett, an engraver: “He lodges in a room with 2 other persons, & for this single room which has a Stone floor, they pay 2 guineas per week to a Prisoner who having been long in confinement has according to the custom of the Prison succeeded to the right of possession of a room. This He makes a Profit of by letting it and himself finds some accommodation at a Cheaper rate.” After paying his share of the rent, and paying for meals, it cost Woollett’s son £2 per week to live in prison, because he could not pay a debt of £300. Were he at liberty, his sister assured Farington, he could repay the debt by working as a solicitor’s clerk. Farington was able to promise her £25 from the Academy fund.75 Woollett’s

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confinement was not unusual, but the payment of a few guineas’ security sometimes enabled convicted debtors to live outside of the prison walls, “within the rules” of the prison. For the cost of the security, and of rent to a local landlord, a temporary respite could be found from creditors so that the debtor could work in greater comfort to support himself and his family, and repay the debt. On the whole the war years were boom years in Britain, but the price of bread more than doubled between 1794 and 1800. There were years of recession, and artists found circumstances especially difficult. There was a financial crisis in 1793 shortly after the outbreak of war. The number of merchant ships being built fell by nearly half, while the number of bankruptcies doubled. This was followed by three years of economic development, but a check came in 1797 with the mutinies in the fleet at Spithead and the Nore, and the threat of invasion. In February 1797 the Bank of England suspended cash payments. Abraham Raimbach recalled in his memoirs that he was just then completing his apprentice years learning the art of engraving: As the period drew near, I felt greatly and, I may say, not unbecomingly anxious as to my future prospects. The war of the French revolution was raging in all its fury; and the nature of the contest, absorbing all men’s thoughts and calling on all men’s exertions, left but little opportunity for the cultivation of the peaceful arts. Every thing connected with them was, of course, at the lowest ebb – so low, indeed, that I remember, during Mr. Pitt’s administration, the members and associates of the Royal Academy were expressly exempted from the operation of some war-tax, then levied, in consideration of the abject and almost expiring state to which the fine arts had been reduced. I forget the name of the tax in question, but have a distinct recollection of the fact stated, and, moreover, that it excited no feelings of dissatisfaction whatever in the community at large, so universally known was the destitute condition of the artists in general.76

James Northcote in his old age came to think of the hardship of artists as a necessary evil. In his published Conversations with James Ward on Art and Artists, he said that Ward, who was a painter and engraver, had told of his refusal to support the establishment of an Academy of Arts in Carlisle. As justification he explained: “Fuseli, who is old and experienced in such matters, says that instead of encouraging young men to become painters, every obstacle should be thrown in their way, as none

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but those who have strength and resolution to surmount them can possibly succeed; the rest may become successful tailors and shoe makers, and thus be saved from ruin before it is too late.” Northcote disagreed, or said he did: “There is another view on the subject, however, which may be brought against your own. To engage numbers of candidates is the only way to advance art. To be sure, individuals must suffer, which is the case with every great undertaking; when an army, for instance takes a town by storm, great numbers must fall; and in establishing or reforming a religion, many must become martyrs; this indeed, is Nature’s way in accomplishing her great purposes.”77 Nelson’s victory at the Nile did much to restore the confidence of the art market and give British artists material to work with, allowing them to compete with the work of the older masters. In the last two years of the eighteenth century, economic growth returned and was to be sustained until 1808 when Napoleon’s attempt to block British exports to the continent again brought a check. The total value of Britain’s foreign trade had been £41.5 million in 1792, and rose to £69 million in 1800; after the setback years of 1808 to 1812 it ended the war in 1815 at £68 million.

 A smaller number of the artists of naval victory lived all their lives outside London. William Clark, who lived in Greenock and painted ship portraits, was one of these. Joseph Walter, who, like Pocock, was a Bristol man and painted ship portraits, never left the town of his birth. Robert Salmon had been born in Whitehaven in Cumberland and worked in Liverpool from June 1806 until 1811, when he moved to Greenock. Between 1822 and 1828 he moved repeatedly about the west of England and Scotland before finally crossing the Atlantic to Boston.78 However, London was the centre of the arts world, and few attempted to make a career as a painter without moving there. During the wars with the French Republic and Empire, London, including the cities of Westminster and Southwark, reached a population of a million and was probably the largest city in the world. Certainly it was the largest city in Europe, but in 1794 when Boydell decided to publish his two-volume History of the River Thames, with a map, London occupied a very limited extent. Urban London extended from Paddington and Kensington on the northwest and west, to Stepney in the east, with Southwark fringing the river on the south with bridges at Westminster,

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Blackfriars, and London Bridge. Boydell commissioned William Combe to write the text, but perhaps to spare him from his creditors he did not name Combe on the title page. Boydell’s old protégé Farington made a series of views of the Thames, which he executed as ink drawings with watercolour washes, and which were made into aquatints by J.C. Stadler. Farington presented the city in a romantic light, with lawns and the winding river illuminated by a soft light. There was no suburban sprawl, because there was little public transport and even the coaches of the wealthy made slow progress. Farington’s plate of Greenwich from Deptford Yard shows that his abilities in topographical drawing did not always extend to shipping.79 Boydell’s map was followed by a much more detailed thirty-twosheet map of London published by Richard Horwood of Mare Street, Hackney. This was completed in 1799, the same year that saw the first issue of the Naval Chronicle with detailed accounts of the Battle of the Nile. It is a wonderful resource which makes it possible to know the city during the period of the wars.80 Indicative of the capital mobilized by the war was the construction between 1797 and 1800 of the West India dock in the Isle of Dogs, which allowed ships to be unloaded rapidly and securely into warehouses protected from pilfering. A ship canal was also built through the water meadows to enable ships to be hauled into the pool of London without waiting for a northern breeze to take them to Greenwich followed by a southern to carry them the rest of the way. On the Surrey side, the Upper Wet Dock had been built in 1698 with a double row of trees to protect tall ships from winds over the marshes, but it was to be expanded into the Greenland Dock. The construction of the London and Surrey commercial docks, with the East India dock on the north side below the Isle of Dogs, followed in the next five years. By 1808 the West India Dock was handling nearly 600 ships a year.81 London’s role in naval affairs was based on its commercial and administrative importance. Warships were still built at the yards downriver at Deptford and Woolwich, and Woolwich arsenal supplied guns for the fleet, but the river was too shallow for a fleet anchorage, and in any event was not well placed to support operations against the French and Spaniards. Portsmouth, with its anchorage at Spithead, was the principal fleet base, and Devonport yard on the Tamar near Plymouth was best placed for Atlantic service. Supply ships were laded in the Thames and made the slow passage downriver, through the Downs and along the

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south coast. Nearer were the dockyards at Chatham and Sheerness on the Medway River at its confluence with the Thames estuary. The fleet anchorage at the Nore buoy off Sheerness was the main defence of the Thames. The mutiny of the fleet at the Nore in 1797 was a serious threat to the capital. In Westminster, near the site occupied by Whitehall Palace before the fire of 1698, the Admiralty building had been erected in 1725–26 to a design by Thomas Ripley. In 1760 Robert Adam had designed a columned wall across its approach to conform with contemporary taste and to keep unpaid and rioting seamen at a distance. The Admiralty Board met there more or less continuously to make appointments and determine the disposition of fleets, and it was also a place of public resort where Robert Haydon went for his coffee. On 26 March 1796 a print was published showing the mechanical telegraph that had just been erected on the Admiralty building roof.82 A chain of similar stations, built on a model employed by the French between Paris and the naval dockyards, was used to transmit signals to Chatham and the fleet anchorage in the Downs, to Portsmouth, to Harwich, and eventually, in July 1806, out west to Plymouth. The Navy Board, which was responsible for the materiel needs of the navy, was located in its own building near the Tower in the commercial district at the east end of London. Despite William Pitt’s introduction of income tax as a temporary emergency measure, the rich continued to live well throughout the war. In the mid-eighteenth century Mayfair had been built by the Grosvenor and Berkeley estates and ninety-nine-year leases sold to the wealthy who built elegant Georgian mansions for their London homes. Here lived many of the people who were patrons of the artists of naval victory. Other mansions were built in the fields south of Hyde Park, stretching west along Kensington Gore toward the royal residence at Kensington Palace. The royal court was located, and still is, at St. James’s Palace on the Mall, flanked by Green Park on the West and St. James’s Park on the south. In 1800, in the boom years in the middle of the war, the Fifth Duke of Bedford started the development of his estate north of Holborn into the graceful series of squares and terraces around and northward of the British Museum. In 1811 the lease on Marylebone Park reverted to the crown, and the new Prince Regent, the future George IV, set in motion its transformation into Regent’s Park. The intention was to build a villa in the park for the prince, and the architect John Nash was commissioned to cut Regent Street through a maze of small

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streets, linking Regent’s Park to the prince’s residence at Carleton House on Pall Mall. Portland Place had been laid out by the Adam brothers in 1779, and Regent’s Park was to have been surrounded by palaces for the very rich, but instead Nash built rows of terraces for the middle classes in a simplified neo-classical style that made purists sniff. Along Horseferry Road out to the rural village of Chelsea was marshy land used for market gardens and made fertile by the cartloads of dirt from the septic tanks of London. The Chelsea Water Company provided water for most of the new residential districts. At the present site of Victoria Station was a Newcomen steam pump that raised the untreated river water and sent it along pipes made of bored-out trunks of elm trees joined by iron ferrules, to a reservoir in Green Park. Close to it was a sewage pond serving the new houses of Mayfair. The first telegraph station on the Portsmouth line was located at the Royal Hospital for old soldiers at Chelsea. Regent Street firmly divided the wealthy “west end” from the small streets of Soho and north of Oxford Street to Tottenham Court, an old manor house that had been converted into the Adam and Eve public house. These were the homes of the less well to do, among whom were many artists. Chambers lived in several addresses in the Tottenham Court Road area, which was known as an artists’ quarter. For a while he lived in the new terraces north of Regent’s Park, but they were too isolated if he were to find commissions. Turner, on the other hand, acquired a house in which he built a gallery in Harley Street west of Regent Street. Later he moved his residence to the rural village of Hammersmith up the river where de Loutherbourg also lived. Reynolds lived most of his life in Leicester Fields and died there in 1792. Pocock, when he moved from Bristol, settled on Great George Street close to Westminster Hall where the law courts were located, and near St Stephen’s Chapel, in which the Commons met until they were burned out in 1834. South London was planned as a rival to the grand terraces of the Grosvenor and Bedford estates of the north, but it never lost its working character. Along the Borough High Street from London Bridge were dozens of rambling inns each with its own courtyard, of which only the George now survives. On the adjacent Borough Road and Newington Causeway were located the King’s Bench and Marshalsea prisons, casting their “shades” across so many lives. Greenwich at the end of the eighteenth century was little more than a village, but its associations with the navy were strong. It was entirely dominated by the Greenwich

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Hospital for elderly and maimed seamen, which had been constructed by Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmore on ground given by Queen Mary in gratitude for the victories of Barfleur and La Hogue in 1692.83 It was in the “Painted Hall” of the Hospital, covered with murals painted by Sir James Thornhill to commemorate the battles, that the body of Vice Admiral Nelson lay in state before his funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral in January 1806. It was also there that the National Gallery of Marine Paintings was to be established in 1829. Stanfield was to be appointed curator of the marine painting collection in 1844. Nelson’s death led to committees being formed throughout the country to design memorials, but in London it was to be several decades before work was begun on opening up the area occupied by the Royal Mews and several streets of houses into Trafalgar Square, which is now the heart of London. In 1834 work was started on building a National Gallery on the north side of the square, but it was not until 1840 that Nelson’s Column was erected in the square, and the Landseer Lions were not placed around it until 1867.

Two The Glorious First of June

The first shots in the naval war were fired from the Brest Harbour batteries on 2 January 1793 at a diminutive British brig, hms Childers, which was “looking into” the harbour to count the number of ships lying to moorings, and to see whether they were getting ready for sea by swaying up their yards and sails. A declaration of war against Britain, the Netherlands, and Spain by the French National Convention followed on 1 February 1793, but the revolution had decimated the French officer corps and seriously undermined naval discipline. For well over a year the Marine de la République Française was not able, or willing, to risk battle with the exceptionally well prepared British Channel Fleet. The strategic plan of the Committee of Public Safety was to conserve and develop its naval resources to make the invasion of England possible. At the end of May 1794, however, the need to escort into Brest a convoy from the United States laden with grain compelled the French to fight two major actions. The Battle of the Glorious First of June, a name that included the action on 29 May, was the first naval event of the war to attract much attention from the artists of naval victory, and the action was to be exceptionally well recorded by some of the most important. At the outbreak of war the court appointment of Marine Painter in Ordinary to His Majesty had been held by an aging artist, Dominic Serres, but he died during the course of the year. His contribution to the arts of war had been considerable, but on his death King George III allowed the title to pass to his son John Thomas. The younger Serres was to play a valuable part as draughtsman to the Board of Admiralty, and painted some interesting pictures, but as an artist he was no replacement for his father. This circumstance ensured, at any rate, that there would be room

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in the field for others. De Loutherbourg, who was recognized as a leader in the genre of history and battle painting, Pocock, whose knowledge of maritime affairs was unparalleled, Mather Brown from Massachusetts, Robert Cleveley (or Clevely), Robert Dodd, Richard Livesay, Robert Barker the panoramist, and the cartoonists James Gillray, Isaac Cruikshank, and Thomas Rowlandson all contributed in their very different ways pictures of the battle, the fleets, and the people.

 By 1794 Philip James de Loutherbourg had established such a position in the world of the arts that it was a matter of some importance that he should have taken on the role of war artist. He had been born in Strasbourg in 1740 and had established his reputation in Paris, where he studied with Carl van Loo and Francesco Giuseppe Casanova, who specialized in battle pictures.1 He was elected in 1767 to the Académie Royale, where he exhibited portraits, landscapes, battles, and marine subjects, but in 1771 he moved with his family to London. It was at the Angelo home that de Loutherbourg met David Garrick, who was retired from acting but continued to be manager of the Drury Lane Theatre. He offered de Loutherbourg the princely salary of £500 a year to work on theatre set design.2 In his Reminiscences Henry Angelo wrote that, in return for his income, de Loutherbourg was to “do nothing more than design the scenes, which were painted from his small, coloured sketches, under his superintendence, by the scene painters already in the theatrical establishment.”3 In 1778 Thomas Gainsborough painted a portrait that gives away little, beyond de Loutherbourg’s Germanic good looks.4 When de Loutherbourg painted a self-portrait a quarter of a century later he had become heavy set and, in a double-breasted broadcloth coat with ruffles at the neck, he had the ponderous presence of a successful man. But that does not obscure the vitality that he imparted even to his self-portrait.5 In his new profession he set a high standard for beauty and invention. He departed from the limitations of contemporary set design by using raked flats to give an appearance of depth, and painted gauze transparencies with front and back lighting to indicate different times of the day, and even to permit rapid set change by switching from front to back light. He introduced three-dimensional models, including fully rigged ships that he moved across the backdrop of the 1773 revival of

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The Masque of Alfred as a topical allusion to George III’s visit to the fleet at Spithead a few months before. In 1782, according to a writer in the European Magazine: “He resolved to add motion to resemblance. He knew that the most exquisite painting represented only one moment of time of action, and though we might justly admire the representation of the foaming surge, the rolling ship, the gliding water, or the running steed; yet however well the action was depicted, the heightened look soon perceived the object to be at rest, and the deception lasted no longer than the first glance. He therefore planned a series of moving pictures, which should unite the painter and mechanic; by giving natural motion to accurate resemblance.”6 De Loutherbourg first introduced his ideas to the public by constructing a motion picture theatre in a comfortable room at his house in Lisle Street, Leicester Square. He called it an “Eidophusikon,” and it was in effect the imax of his day. The principal source of information about the mechanism is an account by William Henry Pyne, an artist who later turned to literature, writing under the name of Ephraim Hardcastle.7 Pyne was to publish in 1803 Microcosm, a volume of images “for the Embellishment of Landscape,” some of which have been used to decorate this volume.8 His account of de Loutherbourg’s experiment in optics in Wine and Walnuts in 1823 vividly describes the trompe l’oeil techniques: “The stage on which the Eidophusikon was represented, was little more than six feet wide, and about eight feet in depth; yet such was the painter’s knowledge of effect and scientific arrangement, and the scenes which he described were so completely illusive, that the space appeared to recede for many miles, and his horizon seemed as palpably distant from the eye, as the extreme termination of the view would appear in nature.” He produced his effects with carefully raked flats, the new Argand lamps which he for the first time placed above the proscenium and provided with coloured glasses, and with back lighting through transparent rolling sets to give the appearance of clouds driven by the wind. “The effect of a Storm at Sea, with the loss of the Halsewell Indiaman, was awful and astonishing; for the conflict of the raging elements he described with all its characteristic horrors of wind, hail, thunder, lightning, and the roaring of the waves, with such marvellous imitation of nature, that mariners have declared, whilst viewing the scene, that it amounted to reality … I can never forget the awful impression that was excited by his ingenious contrivance to produce the effect of the firing of a signal of distress, in his sea-storm.”

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The sound of the gun was produced by a giant tambourine dampened with a sponge, while thunder was imitated by rattling a sheet of copper, and the rush of waves was produced by a subdivided pasteboard box stocked with shells, peas, and balls.9 The use of transparencies was not entirely new, for Sir William Hamilton had sent a picture of the eruption of Vesuvius to the Royal Society in 1768 using transparent paint and intended for back lighting.10 During scene changes in the Eidophusikon, musicians entertained the audience. This led to a farce. De Loutherbourg was prosecuted for giving a musical performance without a license, but the magistrate hearing the complaint granted one without any penalty. Reynolds, West, and Gainsborough were enthusiastic members of the audience, and Gainsborough was stimulated to make his own experimental peep show. This forms part of the Victoria and Albert collection, but the transparencies made for it are in such poor condition that they cannot be shown. The west-country poet and physician John Wolcot, using the nom de plume of “Peter Pindar, Esq., a distant Relation of the Poet of Thebes, and Laureate to the Academy,” versed in his 1782 Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians: And Loutherbourg, when Heaven wills, To make brass skies and golden hills, With marble bullocks in glass pastures grazing; Thy reputation too will rise And people gazing with surprise Cry, “Monsieur Loutherbourg is most amazing.”

Four years later, with Pindar threatening in his Farewell Odes to resign his critical task, he wrote: “Thank God!” the works of Loutherbourg exclaim . . . No longer now afraid of rhiming praters, Shall we be christen’d tea-boards, varnish’d waiters; No verse shall swear that ours are paste-board rocks, Our trees brass wigs and mops our fleecy flocks.11

De Loutherbourg sold the Eidophusikon, but with a new owner it travelled to different sites until an enlarged replica of the original was destroyed by fire in 1800. By that time de Loutherbourg had applied his

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experiments in lighting effects to the big stage at Drury Lane. His crowning achievement was his production, this time at Covent Garden, of Omai, or a Trip Around the World in 1785 with no less than nineteen different scenes ranging from the arctic ocean to a balloon.12 Omai had been brought to England from the Society Islands by Tobias Furneaux and after being lionized by London society was returned home on Captain James Cook’s third voyage in 1772. A half-scale replica of the Eidophusikon was built in 1973 for the Kenwood House de Loutherbourg exhibition. During his years in the theatre de Loutherbourg had never lost his interest in historic and military subjects, and his work on sets did not oblige him to abandon easel painting. In 1778 he had designed a set for Drury Lane Theatre’s production of The Camp, which was so successful that he was commissioned to execute two easel paintings of the actual event on which the play had been based, King George III’s visit to the troops at Wharley Camp, and the exercises that took place on that occasion. The two commissioned pieces were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780, which no doubt helped him obtain election that year as an associate, and as a member in 1781. He also contributed canvasses to Thomas Macklin’s “Poets’ Gallery,” in which each painting was illustrative of a verse or two of poetry. His picture of the Glorious First of June was to be one of the five large canvasses he contributed to Robert Bowyer’s “Historic Gallery.” For Macklin’s project to illustrate the Bible he contributed pictures of chaos, which made an impression on the young J.M.W. Turner. When he quarrelled with Garrick’s successor, Richard Sheridan, and left the theatre in 1785, he was well positioned to depend upon his paintings for a living.13 Circumstances were to make it imperative that he put his abilities and connections to good use. According to some reports, in 1783 he and his wife, probably his second wife, took a trip to Switzerland with the mystic Count Cagliostro. William Whitley, who made a study of contemporary news about the world of arts, dismisses this. He writes: “In the newspapers of 1789 I have not found any suggestion of a connection with Cagliostro, with attempts to discover the philosopher’s stone, or with supposed dabblings in sorcery; all of which have been attributed to De Loutherbourg.”14 However, de Loutherbourg did become a follower of the Austrian doctor Frederick Anton Mesmer, who had developed a psychotherapeutic procedure that verged on mass hypnosis. He established himself and his wife as faith healers, and in 1789 a fellow practitioner, Mary Pratt, published A List of a few Cures per-

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formed by Mr. and Mrs. Loutherbourg of Hammersmith Terrace without Medicine, by a Lover of the Lamb of God, which is dedicated “Most Respectfully … to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.”15 Horace Walpole wrote to the Countess Ossory on 1 July 1789, in a letter about the madness of the French reign of terror, that the English had their own lunacies to confound them: “Loutherbourg, the painter, is turned an inspired physician, and has three thousand patients. His sovereign panacea is barley-water; I believe it is efficacious as mesmerism. Baron Swedenborg’s disciples multiply also. I am glad of it. The more religious, and the more follies the better; they inveigle proselytes from one another.”16 This philanthropic effort ended badly. Whitley quotes a correspondent of the World who wrote: “For his pictures Loutherbourg is paid. For his other art – “Not physic but above it,” as he calls it, he refuses all money that is offered to him. His disciples do the same. Therefore he has few disciples … Loutherbourg, notwithstanding all this, is regarded by those who know him best as a man who when in error is believed not to err from his heart; who is virtuous himself and ever eager to encourage virtue in others.” Whitley adds that the rumour of his supernatural powers, coupled with the fact that his advice was gratuitous, drew crowds to de Loutherbourg’s house. “The groups of patients, which are to be seen at Hammersmith Terrace,” wrote a correspondent of one of the journals, “would furnish hints even to the fanciful Rowlandson.” And with the halt and the lame and the blind came all the idlers and beggars from miles round, not only on the “healing days,” when alone the physician could be seen, but on other days to obtain the tickets that entitled their possessors to treatment; tickets that many applied for only with a view to selling them. De Loutherbourg’s patients and their following became such a nuisance to the neighbourhood that the people of Hammersmith and Chiswick threatened to wreck the house unless it was abated; and after a riot that was not quelled until many heads had been broken, the painter was compelled to abandon all his well-meant plans. And on November 13th, 1789, it was announced in the Morning Herald that “Loutherbourg has entirely given up the practice of working miracles and taken again to his pencil.”17

Mary Pratt admitted that, “as our Lord said, of the ten, healed, one only returned to thank him, so many hundreds have acted, that have never returned to thank Mr. De Loutherbourg.”

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The newspaper accounts were confirmed by Edward Dayes, whose Professional Sketches of Modern Artists was published by his wife in 1805 after his death: “the result was not equal to his hopes: the cripple was not relieved, nor the blind illumined; and the whole proved but the whispering of an evil spirit, who laughingly retired, while the poor Alsatian was left to lament the demolition of his windows.”18 Despite that salutary experience, de Loutherbourg apparently fell under the influence of Richard Brothers. A former naval lieutenant from Placentia, Newfoundland, Brothers had resigned his commission and in 1793 declared himself to be “the nephew of the Almighty, and prince of the Hebrews, appointed to lead them to the land of Canaan.” The Governor of the Poor for the parishes of Saint Margaret and St John the Evangelist Westminster, Joseph Moser, noted that, “as this gentleman was reported to be insane, it struck me at the time, that it seemed a very methodical kind of madness.” He added, “I believe him, if left to follow the dictates of his own heart, to be a man of honour, integrity, and principle.”19 Years later de Loutherbourg was to admit disarmingly to Farington that “He had a Hot Head & a strong mind, & being at an early age His own master, He gave way to many singularities & extravagancies.”20 Admirers of romantic history painting may well be grateful. On 31 July 1793, six months after the outbreak of war, news reached London that the allied forces had taken the French town of Valenciennes, apparently opening the road to Paris. A little less than a month later, on 30 August, de Loutherbourg crossed to Flanders to join the army under the Duke of York, accompanied by the cartoonist James Gillray. As a battle painter, de Loutherbourg no doubt jumped at a chance to exercise his art with subjects of immediate interest to the public, but it is also likely that one consequence of his enthusiasms was that he needed to recoup his savings. The British Magazine later recounted something of the commercial terms de Loutherbourg was able to secure from the print publishers Valentine Green and his son Rupert, and Charles de Mechel, who was a print dealer in Basel: They hesitated not to close with him on his own terms for the first picture; a contract which afterwards served as a price for the second, namely, 750 guineas, exclusive of all the expences attending the collecting of the materials, the journies to Valenciennes and Portsmouth, portraits, frames, &c. &c. amounting in the whole to 1000 guineas each picture. Sanctioned by royal

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patronage and approbation; the outset of this bold speculation, supported by a liberal subscription, promised the most flattering issue to all concerned, and was very properly considered as a national object, arising from the first classes of the British arts, emulous to raise an honourable memorial of the glory acquired by the military and naval prowess of the British arms.21

Rupert Green accompanied the party, presumably to keep an eye on the project.22 The Morning Post of 30 August 1793 asked its readers whether the siege was to be re-enacted “for the amusement and instruction of” de Loutherbourg, but the modus operandi did not call for anything quite so extravagant. While de Loutherbourg made studies of topography and weapons, Gillray was detailed to catch the likenesses of the soldiers. They had to do so on the run, for it appears they arrived in Valenciennes on the third or fourth of September, just before to the rout of the Hanoverian army. Angelo quotes Gillray as saying: “As the bullet whizzes, so I caught their phizzes – flying.” When they returned to England, Angelo continued: “Monsieur De Loutherbourg, and the British limner, were summoned to appear before the King, that his most gracious Majesty might have the gratification of turning over the matériel for this uncle Toby like campaign of the siege.” Gillray’s sketches, he said, “were little more than incoherent scratches – mere technical memoranda, to be worked into form by their author – and certainly incomprehensible to any but an artist, and perhaps that artist, himself. De Loutherbourg was complimented; whilst the only reward obtained by Gillray, was a look which seemed to express, – Mr. Gillray, you might as well have remained at home.”23 It is a little surprising that Gillray dared to go to the palace at all because of his lampoons of the royal family. His cartoon a few months later of The Blessings of Peace and the Curses of War, and those he finished of the Duke of York himself, went well over the top. De Loutherbourg’s painting of the Anglo-Austrian Grand Attack on Valenciennes was intended in the classic manner of a French battle picture to be focused on the god-like war leader, but Thomas Holcroft, the dramatist, went to see the finished picture and commented that the Duke of York “the supposed conqueror; and the Austrian General, who actually directed the siege,” were placed in group where they attracted little attention.24 In reality the “Grand Old Duke of York” had proved a less than successful field commander.25 Gillray’s cartoon of the Duke’s alcoholic excesses, Fatigues of the Campaign in Flanders, was not an

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exaggeration.26 British sensitivity to the security of the Channel led to the breakup of the allied army after the Hanoverian rout, and the Duke of York abandoned the siege of Dunkirk.

 Farington had also visited the Duke of York’s camp at Valenciennes, provided with a letter from William Windham, Member of Parliament for Norwich and a man close to the government.27 The suggestion that Farington might have been in Flanders in some official capacity, perhaps employing his artistic training for intelligence purposes, is interesting. What is known is that he and Joseph Constantine Stadler, an engraver, travelled to the battle site on a commission by Alderman Boydell, and that following his return to England Farington was given a commission by the Navy Board to paint views of the dockyards at Deptford and Chatham. For these he employed a bird’s eye perspective that shows the buildings, and the ships moored in the stream, with great clarity, and less art.28 The experience must have been very trying for an academician. Farington recorded in his diary on 15 June 1794 that a “Mr. White from Deptford came to breakfast. I showed him the picture of Deptford y[ar]d with which He declares himself much pleased.” Farington’s visitor was probably George White, who was Clerk for Seamen’s Wages. But when Farington went himself on 23 July to the Navy Office he found that White’s opinion counted for little: “Sir John Henslow [the Surveyor of the Navy] told me the picture of Deptford Yd is not so well approved of as that of Chatham. I said the subject of it was not so favourable. We had a long conversation, in the board room. – He made many objections while comparing it with the Chatham picture.” In the end Farington had to undertake to make alterations to his picture of Deptford. It proved a little difficult to obtain his payments of only £63 for each picture, minus a fee of ten shillings and six pence to the clerks in the Navy Office.29

 Having spent the winter working on the Valenciennes picture, de Loutherbourg was ready to undertake another commission when the French fleet was finally brought to battle by the Channel Fleet under the command of Admiral Earl Howe. Gillray had contributed to the public

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Joseph Farington, Chatham Dockyard 54⬙

⫻

110⬙,

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©

nmm bhc 1782.

clamour against him, suggesting that Howe was deliberately blinded by French gold – a blow well wide of the mark considering the fiscal difficulties of the French Republic. Another cartoonist, Isaac Cruikshank, made a print of How a Great Admiral with a Great Fleet, went a Great Way, was lost a Great while, saw a Great sight, – & then came home for a little water.30 Howe’s policy of operating the fleet out of its main anchorage at Spithead was based on the ease of supplying it there, and putting into repair any damaged ships. The prevailing southwesterly winds, however, did make it very difficult for a fleet to work its way down Channel should a frigate come running in with news that the French were at sea. When Howe finally did bring the French to battle, the action might well be considered to have been a triumph for the Marine de la République Française. The Brest fleet had only been readied for sea by vigorous use of the guillotine wielded by a member of the Committee of Public Safety, Jeanbon Saint-André. Its commander, Rear Admiral de Villaret de Joyeuse, and his subordinate flag officers were all recent promotions from captain, lieutenant, or even the lower deck. Nevertheless, they skilfully fought a tactical covering action between May 29 and June 1. The

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Isaac Cruikshank, How a Great Admiral with a Great fleet, went a Great way, was lost a Great while, saw a Great sight, – & then came home for a little water, BM Catalogue #8353

grain convoy reached Brest safely, although British control of the French coastwise shipping prevented the cargoes from providing any famine relief in Paris. However, the action was not without substantial French losses to the exceptionally well-prepared British fleet. Howe, employing decisive and innovative tactics, cut the enemy line of battle from leeward, first in line ahead, and then in line of bearing. A British victory was proclaimed on the basis of the number of prizes taken, seven ships of the line (of which one had sunk), and the fact that the French had disengaged when they could and made the best of their way home to Brest. Despite the fact that Villaret de Joyeuse had secured the passage of the convoy, the Royal Navy had established its moral ascendency and seriously set back French preparations for invasion. “At 2 o’Clock in the morning,” of 11 June, Farington recorded, “we were knocked up to put out lights. Many windows were broken. The Illuminations became general.”31 The Britannic Magazine, or Entertaining Repository of Heroic Adventures and Memorable Exploits versed: Earl Howe, “at ebbe of fleeting life, One deede of arms he valiantly achiev’d, of warlike enterprize!”32

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Farington’s keen interest in naval affairs ensured that he followed the news of Lord Howe’s victory closely. On 7 July he went to the Drury Lane Theatre with Opie to see two plays, including one on “the first of June in honor of Lord Howe’s victory.” He thought it “heavy & ill suited … to work on the people properly, it dwells too much on the consequences of war.”33 One of his naval friends was Admiral Sir Allen Gardner, who had flown his flag as a Rear Admiral on the 98-gun hms Queen in the centre squadron during the battle of the First of June. He came to breakfast on 18 July, two weeks after his promotion to Vice Admiral, and told Farington that “Lord Howe had been much hurt at the attacks on him daily in the public prints, before the late engagements, express[ing] his belief that He might be injured in the minds of the Seamen. He talked of throwing up his command which the Admiral [i.e., Gardner] most strongly urged against.” Farington noted in his diary: The certainty with which Lord Howe followed their track caused Admiral Gardner to suppose He must have had certain information of their scheme, but Ld. Howe assured him He gained his intelligence only from the ships the Fleet casually met with. – Many French merchantmen &c were taken, but so determined was Lord Howe not to weaken his ships by putting Seamen into his prizes, that He burnt them every one, though some of them were of considerable value. What a proof of his little regard to property when compared with a sense of public duty … I asked him if He thought the French fought better on this than on any former occasion. He said He thought they seemed less desirous than He has before seen them, to avoid an action; but their comparative inferiority in close action was still the same.34

Farington doesn’t report the conversation on the evening of 1 June 1795 when, at Gardner’s invitation, he went to a commemorative dinner, but he continued to gather details, to satisfy his curiosity, and with a technical interest to the artist. In September 1798 he dined with Captain Cheshire of hms Plover, which was lying off Dover. Cheshire had been First Lieutenant of the Alfred of 74 guns and remarked that Le Vengeur French 74 went down close to the Alfred, but not before the English Ensign was hoisted over the French. – The boats of the Alfred saved about 200 of the French people, who, when brought on board, were put together on the Poop. – The English Sailors seeing their forlorn and naked state, many of them went to the French men and gave their cloaths to them. The French

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sailors seemed to have no feeling for those who were perishing in the water. When the engagement began that morning it blew pretty hard, but the continual firing of so many Ships lulled the wind. When the Vengeur sank there was no chasm on the water, no succsion, as it is generally supposed. The effect of bodies sinking in smooth water is such, but here the motion of the sea constantly filled the vacuum made by the sinking ship as she went down. She went down by the head. There was no truth of the report of the French having in that situation called out “Vive la République”. – On the contrary they were earnestly soliciting aid from our ships.35

The anniversary was still being kept on 1 June 1817 when Farington dined with Captain Francis Beaufort, who had served during the battle as a midshipman in Aquilon (32), which had been well placed to observe the action. He said that previous to the action it was a question of expectation whether the French, then a Republic, would not fight with more resolution than while under a Monarchy. – whether an essential change in the character had taken place or not, but the event shewed that they could not contend with Englishmen. – He said that being in the Aquilon Frigate which was appointed to repeat signals, He had an opportunity to observe the whole action. He said that the two fleets, which were exactly equal in number of guns, being drawn up in two opposite lines, the English having the wind, Lord Howe made a signal for bearing down upon the enemy and after breaking through their line for each ship to fight the particular ship under whose stern he sh[oul]d have passed. While His fleet was bearing down the men in each Ship went to breakfast, which was very judicious as it kept their minds calm, & prepared for the hard work of the day. Soon after the opposing ships came into contest the whole line was covered by a thick cloud of smoke, but after a little time in some parts it cleared up & it was then seen that several of the French ships had fallen out of the line & were dismasted. – It was painful, however, to see that some of the English Captains did not do their duty. One French man of war was sunk, and Six were taken, as might Eleven more had each Captain done the utmost in His power on the occasion. – Capt[ai]n Molloy, a great disciplinarian, whose ship was considered a pattern of order & compleatness for service, did not obey the signals of Lord Howe, and instead of breaking the line of the enemy passed on in their front. – Six English ships did not do their duty, otherwise 18 French Ships w[oul]d have been taken.36



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On Howe’s return to the anchorage at Spithead, de Loutherbourg visited the fleet, again accompanied by Gillray. From a boat they sketched the captured French ships, all floating high out of the water because of the loss of masts, spars, and crew, and possibly because some of their guns had been landed. This graphic record of the damage inflicted on the French ships by British broadsides is unique. It is preserved in the Prints and Drawings department of the British Museum, most of those on paper pasted in a folio and others on card collected in a box.37 There is some uncertainty as to whether they might be Gillray’s work, and indeed some of them were exhibited as Gillray’s in the Tate Gallery Gillray show in 2001.38 However, the sketches came from de Loutherbourg’s estate, they bear little resemblance either to the acknowledged Gillray sketches or to his finished work, and they are clearly the basis from which de Loutherbourg painted his canvas. The problem is complicated by Edward Dayes, who wrote in his Professional Sketches that de Loutherbourg “never condescends to draw from nature; all he does, is to make a few crude lines, where he thinks he may not be able to recollect the scene, on a card, and then he corrects it at night; but he often works entirely from memory.”39 But this observation, from a fellow artist, conflicts with the testimony of Angelo, who had known de Loutherbourg from childhood. Angelo also recalled that de Loutherbourg was such a stickler for detail that he kept a collection of arms for models, “kept bright, and to touch it even was a sort of profanation.”40 Certainly, the high quality of de Loutherbourg’s Flanders and Spithead sketches makes it clear that, if they are de Loutherbourg’s work and if he did work primarily from memory, he had a very good visual memory indeed. De Loutherbourg, or Gillray if you prefer, also sketched details of Howe’s flagship, the Queen Charlotte, and made miniature portraits of some of her people. No doubt with the assistance of the fleet officers, he made diagrams showing the tactical disposition of the antagonists. These sketches, with those of the French prizes, might well be considered his most important contribution to the naval history of the period, for they are masterly representations given in an unvarnished clarity of style that has left a lasting record. They really amount to little works in their own right, imparting to the viewer the latent drama in ships and their fittings, and providing some of the very rare portraits of ordinary seamen executed with sympathy and faith.41 He then proceeded to complete a very large canvas of the Battle of the Glorious First of June, measuring 105⬙ by 147⬙.42 As a work of naval history painting in the English tradition it is a masterpiece, with an

Above: Philip de Loutherbourg, Cresse, Boatswain Venerable, 1799, bm 1882.3.11.1140 Opposite page top: Philip de Loutherbourg, Thomas Ramsay, 5ft 8in 36 [stone], one of the Seamen who boarded the San Josef, bm 1882.3.11.1138 Opposite page bottom: Philip de Loutherbourg, Robert Williams, Boatswain’s Mate, Venerable, bm 1882.3.11.1139

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immediacy and ominous presence equal to the best of the genre. The value de Loutherbourg placed on the appearance of motion, which had led to his construction of the Eidophusikon, gives this painting a great deal of life. Valentine and Rupert Green paid a rent of £200 guineas a year to display it to the public at Bowyer’s Historic Gallery in Pall Mall.43 Subscriptions were solicited for a 20⬙ by 30⬙ print by James Fittler, Marine Engraver to His Majesty.44 Abraham Raimbach remembered Fittler as “an artist of respectable talent, great industry, and considerable reputation at one time.”45 Reviewing de Loutherbourg’s painting and Fittler’s realization of it in 1800, the British Magazine said: The picture of Earl Howe’s victory is one of the boldest and most successful efforts of the artist who produced it, in point of composition, colouring, and general effect … Its details of parts has been honoured with the highest professional approbation, and the costume of the two different countries in the variations of naval architecture and equipment, has met with its due praise for the nicety and accuracy of their discriminations … It may be remarked of sea pieces generally, that by taking away the titles from the prints in which naval engagements have been represented, the one, with very trifling difference, will supply the use of the other, the whole being so much alike. The sea performance before us is the strongest effort at individuality that was every before attempted. It is Earl Howe’s victory over the French fleet, June 1, 1794, and no other. It possesses a feature of singular interest to every friend of the British navy; it has preserved a most exact portrait of the Queen Charlotte man-of-war of 110 guns, as taken by Mr. Loutherbourg for this picture at Spithead.46

The Times reviewed the painting enthusiastically at the end of March 1795: We think it a very essential service to the public, in recommending to their particular attention, Loutherbourg’s celebrated picture of Earl Howe’s Victory, now exhibiting at the Historic Gallery, Pall-Mall. The numerous visitors of the first Nobility and of all ranks, which daily attend that Exhibition, sufficiently prove the uncommon merit of that picture, universally acknowledged the most complete representation of a Naval Engagement ever produced.47

A few days later it suggested that the painting was likely to be purchased by the Admiralty, or by Greenwich Hospital. Six times in the next three months it reported on visits by the nobility, and by five admirals. Prince

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William V, the Stadholder of the Netherlands, visited three times.48 When on 29 July the Times reported that the Historic Gallery was about to close the show, all but forty-four of the 300 subscriptions for Fittler’s print had been sold.49 However, in one important respect de Loutherbourg had taken a dramatic license that caused his composition to depart from accurate representation of tactical dispositions. This the sailors, when they noticed it, considered to be libellous. Besides celebrating a fleet action that was a great victory, the sailors also wanted the picture to justify their own versions of events. In the 1826 second edition of his Naval History of Great Britain, William James wrote: Soon after the battle of the 1st of June the justly celebrated marine painter, P.J. de Loutherbourg, was employed by some enterprising individual to represent the Queen Charlotte engaging the Montagne … the grand mistake in it was, that the Queen Charlotte was placed where Lord Howe wanted to get, but never could get, a little before the lee beam of his antagonist. Amongst others, the officer, whose duty it was (and who would have succeeded, but for the hasty flight of the Montagne and the loss of the Charlotte’s fore topmast) to place the British ship in the desired position, went to see the picture. At the first glance the gallant seaman pronounced the picture a libel upon the Queen Charlotte; inasmuch as, had she been in the position represented, it would have been her fault for letting the Montagne escape. Whether it was owing to this capital blemish, or to the half a dozen minor offences against truth in different parts of it, we cannot say, but the picture gradually sank into disrepute, and eventually became, we believe, lodged with an eminent printseller for some debt amounting to less than a third of its prime cost. After lying rolled up in a corner of one of his rooms, encased in dust, for a number of years, the printseller was fortunate enough, as we have understood, to find a purchaser in his present majesty’s [King George IV’s] surveyor-general of the Board of Works.50

James obviously felt that oblivion was the appropriate end of de Loutherbourg’s canvas, and for different reasons his fellow artist, Edward Dayes, came close to agreeing: “As an historical painter, he is highly imperfect: he draws ill, and, if possible, conceived his subject worse; and his style of execution is too clean and delicate for such a line of art.” There must be a story behind this highly prejudiced view, but Dayes did admit that “In agitated water he [de Loutherbourg] is very successful; and this is a fine feature in his Lord Howe’s Victory.”51

1

2 Philip de Loutherbourg, five sketches made at Spithead after the battle of the Glorious First of June: (1) Admiral Lord Howe’s flagship the Queen Charlotte, (2) Stern and Quarter views of French Prizes, (3) Stern view of French prize Le Sans Pareil of 80 guns, (4) French Prizes Le Juste of 80 guns and L’Amerique of 70, (5) Queen Charlotte’s Cathead and sails drying, bm 1857.6.13.588, 591, 600, 606, and 1868.3.28.133.

3

4

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Philip de Loutherbourg, self-portrait, oil, 1805–1810, npg 2493

Farington was another critic. Once the novelty was over he came to think “the picture ill coloured & I think not so ingeniously designed as I sh[oul]d have expected.”52 When he called on Smirke in July 1798 he found there two of de Loutherbourg’s pictures. Smirke “remarked how carefully Loutherbourgh attended to his gradations strengthening his tints & light [and] shade from the distance to the foreground,” but Farington “felt that this proved little science in the artist and is a very attainable way of making up pictures.”53 He was probably envious of de Loutherbourg. There are many entries in his diary of conversations concerning de Loutherbourg’s personality and his technique. He records a conversation with Sir Peter Francis

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Philip de Loutherbourg, Tactical sketch, bm 1868.3.28.169

Bourgeois ra, who had studied under de Loutherbourg and remembered that his teacher had “no particular rule by which He regulates his practise – but when He begins a picture where his reputation is concerned He draws in a careful outline with Chalk and then goes over it with some brown colour, producing a drawing which a byestander w[oul]d wish not to be again touched. – On this He paints[,] finishing as much as He can at once. – He prefers light grounds from the Colourmans [sic], as He thinks the dark brown grounds will appear through the colours and prevent the effect of air. He uses fast Drying oil – or Drying oil with Turpentine – and as much as he can avoids repeating his colours so as to load the Canvass.”54 Bourgeois added years later, after de Loutherbourg’s death, that he “Laboured under a radical defect, His Vision being such that He never could see but a small part of His picture and not the whole together. This accounted for His crude colouring, for His bringing Hot & Cold colours together so as [to] produce a discordant effect.”55 Farington also noted that de Loutherbourg “paints skies with Prussian Blue and white and goes over this preparation with Ultramarine & White,” and that he “approved of massicut, but c[oul]d get none, that

Philip de Loutherbourg, Battle of the Glorious First of June.

©

nmm bhc 0770.

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was good in England. He does not use Lake, & no Vermillion with his white.”56 As late as 1812 he noted in his diary the remark of the watercolourist Samuel Owen to the effect that de Loutherbourg “had great dexterity of hand but little resemblance to nature, & yet had sufficient merit to cause His pictures (the best of them) to be preserved as works of great ingenuity.”57 Owen may have been influenced more by Dayes’s critique, which had been published in 1805, than by actual observation of de Loutherbourg’s pictures. The Glorious First of June, which at first was known as Earl Howe’s Victory over the French Fleet, June 1, 1794, is a work that imparted more than a little of de Loutherbourg’s facility in dramatic scene painting to the battle subject. In contrast to the more common “still life” effect of contemporary battle pictures, de Loutherbourg’s work is “stop action” with a fine sense of movement momentarily arrested. The scale is such that his portrait sketches of Queen Charlotte’s crew could not be used directly, but the human drama is expressed by men in boats in the foreground rescuing others who were in the water or clinging to wreckage. He made highly effective use of colours, to express the triumph that Britons, and especially the naval officers involved, most certainly felt. To do so, however, he employed the vocabulary and grammar of the contemporary world of arts, and these discouraged a slavish concern for representational accuracy. If de Loutherbourg was indeed paid £750 guineas plus £1,000 guineas in expenses to paint his picture, James’s account of the financial loss he suffered must be wrong. De Loutherbourg may also have realized something from a smaller copy he painted of the picture.58 It was probably the print dealers who were most affected by the change in fortunes of The Glorious First of June. In 1805 Farington was to note that the Greens were in a disastrous financial situation: By various speculations & expensive living, the Father & Son were in a few years in great difficulties, and a Bankruptcy followed. – Finally Rupert was reduced to live near Chelsea, with his wife and 6 Children in a manner miserable, and their chief support arose from charitable contributions raised by advertisements describing their wretched situation. Rupert endeavoured to get a little money by miniature painting, but his constitution gave way and he died a few weeks ago. – Valentine Green cohabits with a widow who has 2 daug[h]t[e]rs. – They pass as married people, but it is believed that no act of marriage has taken place, as by that £150 a year which she possesses would have been forfeited to his creditors.59

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The main canvas was resurrected in 1823 when St. James’s Palace was being redecorated, and eventually became part of the collection at the National Maritime Museum.

 Another who travelled down to Spithead was the young American artist Mather Brown. He had been born in Boston 7 October 1761. His mother was of the distinguished Mather family of Harvard-educated Congregational ministers; and when she died Mather was brought up in the home of his grandfather, the Reverend Dr Mather Byles. His mother expressed in verse her hopes for her son: “If a fine Genius might be given / To taste the Wonderous Works of Heaven / I fain would call that Blessing down.” John Singleton Copley had been a friend of the family and painted portraits of his parents.60 Brown’s brothers fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill but his grandfather’s family were loyalists. On the British evacuation of Boston, Brown set off to see the world and earn his living by painting miniature portraits. The war had created a great demand for such personal mementos. On his return to Boston he rented a studio and made a painting trip to Hispaniola, before deciding in 1782 to cross the Atlantic to visit Europe and work in London. His ship was chased into Brest by an English privateer, and Brown grabbed the chance to visit Paris and see the paintings in the palaces. He obtained a letter of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin West, and a passport to England. West, who had a good reputation as a teacher, gave Brown every encouragement, and started him on a meteoric career. In 1782 Brown was admitted as a pupil at the Royal Academy and quickly established a reputation for his portraits among the expatriate American community in London. He even succeeded in getting a likeness of Ambassador John Adams and went on to receive the regular patronage of the next American ambassador, Thomas Jefferson. He was also given one of the very rare commissions to paint altarpieces, for the Church of St Mary-le-Strand in London, where they may still be seen on either side of the chancel. During the 1780s Brown had begun to establish a reputation for history pictures, for which he received commissions from Thomas Macklin’s “Poets’ Gallery” and Boydell’s “Shakespeare Gallery.” In December 1788 Brown was allowed to style himself “Portrait Painter to his Royal Highness the Duke of York,” and later the Duke of Clarence also granted his patronage. He established what appears to be a business partnership

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with the engraver and printseller Daniel Orme. By the time of the outbreak of war in 1793, however, Brown’s trajectory was beginning to decline. He put his name forward for election as an associate of the Academy, in 1792 and 1793, and was to do so again in 1795, but he was rejected. Perhaps his early success had given him an unwelcome cockiness. Evidently he did not canvas Farington’s support, and Farington did not approve of him, perhaps for that reason. He also failed to get a position as drawing master at the Royal Military College at High Wycombe, or at its junior department at Marlow. When his patron, the Duke of York, went to Flanders, Brown saw this as an opportunity to undertake a topical history painting that might generate some income. Unlike de Loutherbourg, he did not cross the Channel, but after Lord Howe’s victorious return to Spithead he did hurry down the Portsmouth road with a view to undertaking a major painting to commemorate the battle. His approach to the subject was to be radically different from de Loutherbourg’s. West’s great milestone in the development of heroic history painting had been The Death of General Wolfe, which he painted in 1770. He had broken new ground by letting his composition express simple human emotions of pain, fear, and sorrow. Instead of the bland smirk expected of victorious generals, and the classical stances that West had himself promoted as the models of artistic excellence, Wolfe’s representation by West echoed a Deposition – the traditional image of the broken body of the dead Christ, surrounded by his grieving friends.61 Rather than seeking any sort of portrait accuracy, West had idealized the figures in the drama and placed them carefully to produce a balanced composition and rhetorical gesture. But he did depart from the prevailing norms by giving his figures contemporary military uniforms instead of roman togas. The best-known version was presented to the Canadian War Memorial Fund by the Duke of Westminster in 1917 in acknowledgment of the heroism of the Canadian Army in the Battle of Vimy, and is now an important part of the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.62 His rejection of portrait accuracy was given validation the following year by Reynolds’s caution to the Academy students: “An History-painter paints man in general; a Portrait-Painter, a particular man, and consequently a defective model.”63 Reynolds had made his comfortable income from portraits of the rich and powerful, but even in his portraits he had not sought to penetrate the psychology of his sitter. To have done so would have forced him to depart from his pursuit of the general and the sublime.64

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Brown’s training as one of West’s pupils pushed him in the direction of a shipboard scene with the figures of the ship’s company in full scale on a canvas measuring over nine by twelve feet. But he had only lately turned to history painting from a successful career as a portrait painter, and he was at least as much influenced by his old family friend Copley’s introduction of portraiture to battle painting. In 1782 Copley had painted a picture of The Death of Major Peirson in which he had made true portraits of the people in the scene.65 John Williams, alias Anthony Pasquin, was not one of Copley’s admirers and objected to his introduction of particular people into history painting in violation of Reynolds’s strictures. With complacent irony he wrote in his Memoirs of the Royal Academicians: “I shall forbear to criticise, at present, upon his Death of Major Peirson and his Siege of Gibraltar [The Spanish Floating Batteries at Gibraltar], as my comments might be more injurious to the encouragers of the arts than [to] the immediate Artist.”66 But Copley’s work was otherwise well regarded, and Brown’s successes in the field of portraiture made it natural for him to follow Copley’s lead. When the Britannic Magazine published an account of Brown’s Lord Howe on the Deck of the Queen Charlotte, it wrote: “This composition is treated in a manner entirely novel, and perfectly distinct from any other nautical engagement hitherto executed; there has never yet been even attempted the introduction of portraits into a naval picture; and the mode of thus marking the resemblance of our gallant officers, and the view of the awful conflict, has been thought by our first connoisseurs to be a singular and fortunate combination.” Included in the review, which reads as if it were based on Brown’s press release, is a fold-out key to the persona. De Loutherbourg had in fact undertaken portraits for his painting of the Battle of the Glorious First of June, but he had confined them to the ordinary seamen struggling in the water, while Brown made the portraits the dominant feature of his picture. The artist Mr. Brown … has on this occasion received the most flattering attention; Earl Howe has sat to him expressly for this picture; and most of the admirals of the fleet have given their advice and assistance, and Mr. Brown had the singular opportunity of actually residing on-board the Queen Charlotte, at Spithead, since the arrival, after the victory, and he there had the opportunity of not only painting the portraits of the principal officers on-board, in Earl Howe’s own state-cabin, but likewise, that of taking measurements of the different parts of the ship, and obtaining the first sources of documentary information.67

Mather Brown, Lord Howe on the Deck of the Queen Charlotte, 102⬙ ⫻ 144⬙, © nmm bhc 2740.

The focus of the picture was on Captain Neville of the Queen’s Royal Regiment, who was dying from a wound caused when a cannon shot had driven part of the hilt of his sword into his side. He was being supported by Captains Lock and Tudor and Major Isaac. Queen Charlotte’s captain, Sir Andrew Snape Douglas, is on the right, staggered by the head wound from which he was to die. Admiral Howe is left of centre, sword in hand. Over his shoulder in the centre of the picture can be seen the broken enemy line: “the Royal George, the Gibraltar, Glory, and other ships, engaging the enemy, with the Vengeur and Sans Pareille, appearing between the intervals of smoke.” “The minutiae of the ship has not been neglected by the artist, who has particularly pourtrayed the rigging; the cannon (with the [firing] locks, as now generally adopted by the navy), and the mode of stowing the hammocks, which form the bar-

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ricade to defend the side, by placing them between the timber heads, with large double staunchion irons.” A midshipman of hms Defence, later Vice Admiral Sir William Henry Dillon, came to view the painting. He recorded in his autobiography that Queen Charlotte’s master, James Bowen, objected to Brown’s placing Graham Eden Hammond on the far right with a megaphone. Hammond was a relation of Captain Douglas and was serving as his aide de camp, but allegedly Bowen said he had been safely in the cockpit at the time. Refusing to countenance this departure from accuracy, Bowen would not agree to Brown’s request to take his portrait for inclusion in the picture.68 However, in several respects Dillon’s memory is unreliable. He criticized the picture because he remembered Brown making the deck planking run athwart-ships, but in fact it does not. So perhaps Hammond’s part had been more glorious than Dillon remembered. Hammond’s right side is lost in the picture as it now exists, not as a result of enemy action, but due to a later need to make the picture fit a smaller frame.69 Bowen was one of the heroes of the battle and was rewarded for it with a commission and with an appointment as the fleet’s prize agent. The story is that during the battle, when Admiral Howe ordered Queen Charlotte steered to starboard, Bowen warned that the course would foul the stern of the Montagne. “What’s that to you, Sir?” Howe snapped, and repeated “Starboard.” “Damned if I care if you don’t,” Bowen muttered. “I’ll take you near enough that you’ll singe your black whiskers,” which he did. Farington’s version is that “Lord Howe told him to direct the Queen Charlotte against the Bowsprit of one of them, which being done the French ship was obliged to give way to avoid the consequence.”70 Montagne’s ensign is said to have swept the deck of Queen Charlotte as she passed under her stern, raking her with a broadside. Howe rewarded Bowen by making him prize master, by which, according to Farington, he made £10,000. It may have been Bowen who was the officer William James said had given de Loutherbourg a hard time about his composition. When Brown finished his picture it was displayed to the King and to Queen Charlotte at Buckingham House, and then on 1 January 1795 it was put on display at Orme’s gallery in Old Bond Street. Apparently no admission was charged. The plan was to use Brown’s painting to advertise a large print that was being offered by Orme for £1 guinea. When de Loutherbourg’s picture was hung in the Historic Gallery in March, the rivalry between his painting and Brown’s became quite explicit. His

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undertaking of such a major naval subject may have led to the commission he received to paint Captain Home Popham’s portrait, which is now in the possession of the Royal Naval Museum.71

 Robert Cleveley was forty-seven when the news of the battle reached London, and he joined the throng of artists heading for Portsmouth. Farington says Cleveley had been employed as a caulker, but that he had disliked the work and had been laughed at by his fellow caulkers for working in gloves. No doubt he did so because he was ambitious to move up in the world. When he left the dockyard he had found employment between 1770 and 1773 as clerk to Captain William Locker in hms Thames. Raimbach remembered Locker to be, “as many naval officers are, an amateur of the arts,” and “a good specimen of the old English sea-officer – kind-hearted, dignified, and free from all affectation. I have always borne his memory in respect.”72 In 1777 Horatio Nelson, a freshly promoted lieutenant, had been put under his command in the Lowestoft, and in 1780–81 Locker had commissioned John Rigaud to paint Nelson’s portrait.73 It is more than likely that Locker encouraged Cleveley’s decision to make his living from marine painting. But Farington noted in his diary after dining with White from Deptford that it was Admiral Vandeput who was Cleveley’s friend, and for whom Cleveley worked when the admiral was captain of Princess Augusta yacht.74 Cleveley was borne, for victuals only, in the yacht’s muster book for 1786, being listed as an assistant clerk and part of the captain’s household.75 Paul Sandby was another of Cleveley’s friends. Cleveley had been commissioned to illustrate Arthur Phillip’s Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay, which was published in 1789, and the results were somewhat unfortunate. He had not been on the voyage, and his work was in consequence based on classical artistic models, rather than on life sketches. They were skilfully and attractively executed, but they had little value as reportage.76 It was different with his handling of naval subjects, to which he was able to bring first-hand observation and technical knowledge. By 1794 his reputation in that field was already well established. In 1791 he had begun to style himself “Marine Draughtsman to His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence” following his exhibition at the Royal Academy the previous year of two paintings: the duke’s Reception on Board the Barfleur

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Samuel Freeman after Sir William Beechey, Robert Cleveley, stipple engraving published 1810, 9⬙ ⫻ 5⅝⬙, npg d18158.

and his passage on the Augusta Yacht, going to Hanover … 77 He was later to style himself “Marine Painter to the Prince Regent.” The National Maritime Museum’s Catalogue of Prints and Drawings includes over eighty of his works, the majority of which deal either with unspecific naval subjects such as “A Three-Decker,” or with historic events prior to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The print dealer A.C. de Poggi asked Farington in August for an introduction to Admiral Gardner so that he might show him Cleveley’s design for a picture of the Glorious First of June, presumably to ensure that he had gotten the details correctly. When Farington visited de Poggi’s workshop at 91 New Bond Street on October 1, he saw there two drawings by Cleveley of the battle, probably Morn and Even of the Great Victory of the British Fleet under Earl Howe on 1 June 1794, which were greatly admired when they were exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1796.78 The pictures were enormous, measuring 90⬙ by 138⬙ each.79 De Poggi published engravings of Cleveley’s pictures by Thomas Medland and by B.T. Pouncy, who had engraved many of the elder John Cleveley’s pictures.80 He stretched the truth more than a little by describing

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Robert Cleveley, Royal Visit to Spithead on 26 June 1794, © nmm bhc 0475.

Robert Cleveley as “of the Royal Navy.” The price asked was high, at £3 guineas for the pair. De Poggi also published a diagram of the battle and key, which was published on 5 March 1796, when the prints were evidently reissued with a 100-page descriptive Narrative and an elevenpage advertisement.81 Over ten years later, Mrs de Poggi asked permission of the British Institution to exhibit Cleveley’s pictures of the battle for sale. But she was refused, and when Cleveley protested, he was told that the Institution would only handle works that were the property of the artist who had executed them, or of his family.82 Williams (or Pasquin) preferred Cleveley’s work to de Loutherbourg’s: Mr. Loutherbourgh’s picture on this popular subject is too licentious in the points of historic fact to please any nautical observer. Mr. Clevely’s performance did not impress me, instantaneously, with so much pleasure as Mr. Loutherbourg’s; but it had this very desirable effect, that my satisfaction was strengthened in proportion as I viewed it. It is evident that this Artist has a far deeper knowledge of his subject than his compeer, and has not violated authenticity

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Top Detail from A.C. de Poggi, Plan of the Battle of the Glorious First of June, published 5 March 1796. bm 1857-1-9-197

upon any material point: he has not painted to amaze but to satisfy: he has grouped both his pictures with an admirable taste; all the minutiae of the marine are rigorously preserved, and the effect of his atmosphere at morning and evening is strictly compatible with truth and harmony.83

Cleveley also painted a small oil-on-board picture of the royal visit to Spithead on 26 June 1794 to review the triumphant fleet, when George III presented Earl Howe with a diamond-hilted sword.84



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When Howe brought the victorious fleet home with its French prizes, Thomas Rowlandson was already there. He was an artist of great individuality who had early developed a capacity for caricature that his training at the Royal Academy had failed to suppress. He had been born in 1756 and schooled at Dr Barlow’s on Soho Square, and at Eton, before going to the Royal Academy. There he had gained a reputation for high spirits, tormenting the founder of the English “sublime” landscape, Richard Wilson, who was librarian. Later he studied drawing for several years in Paris. He first exhibited at the Academy in 1775 and then settled down to work as a portrait painter. Nevertheless, his friends continued to be cartoonists like Gillray, Henry Wigstead, and James William Bunbury. Henry Angelo wrote of Rowlandson: His powers, indeed, were so versatile, and his fancy so rich, that every species of composition flowed from his pen with equal facility. His misfortune, indeed, was, as I have been assured by capable authorities, who noticed his juvenile progress, that of possession too ready an invention: – this rare faculty, strange as it may seem, however desirable to the poet, often proved the bane of the painter … Rowlandson was no philosopher, and so his incontrollable spirit, sweeping over the prescribed pale, took its excursive flights, and caught its thema upon the wing. Hence I think it may safely be averred, that he has sketched or executed more subjects of real scenes, in his original, rapid manner, than any ten artists, his contemporaries, and etched more plates than any artists, ancient or modern.85

A modern scholar, Arthur M. Hind, writes: “His love of irregular living led him to leave a field in which persistent effort was essential, and restrict himself to forms of art which were more compatible with his devotion to the gaming-house and tavern. We cannot imagine Rowlandson other than he is, and perhaps the very irregularity of his life is to be thanked for preserving the caricaturist of first water, where we might have had another portrait painter among so many.”86 Everything about Rowlandson was on a generous scale, as Angelo records: “His mighty stature astonished the many but none more than the [French] innkeepers’ wives, who, on his arrival, as he travelled in style, looked at the larder, and then again at the guest. All regarded him as that reported being, of whom they had heard, the veritable Mister Bull. His orders

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George Henry Harlow, Thomas Rowlandson, pencil heightened with red chalk, 1814, npg 2813.

for the supplies of the table, ever his first concern, strengthened this opinion, and his operations at his meals confirmed the fact. Wherever he went, he made good for the house.” The turning point in his career, which finally decided him to work exclusively with cartoons, had been a visit with Wigstead in 1782 to Spithead to see the wreck of the Royal George, which had capsized at anchor at the cost of many lives, including that of Rear Admiral Richard Kempenfelt. Rowlandson made at least sixty-nine drawings of the scene, which were well received.87 In 1784 he exhibited three humorous drawings at the Academy, and never looked back. His drawing of the triumphant return of Earl Howe’s fleet was a piece of topical journalism – a picture of the crowd assembled to cheer, some of them scrambling to get possession of the top of the wall so that they could see better.88 In the tradition of eighteenth-century watercolour, Rowlandson’s drawing has a strong pen line lightly washed with iridescent pastel colour.89



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Thomas Rowlandson, Portsmouth Harbour, Lord Howe’s Victory, The French Prizes brought into the Harbour, signed, colour, 13½⬙ ⫻ 9⬙, v&a dg31 misdated 1780, Dyce 791.

De Loutherbourg, Brown, and Rowlandson had only travelled down from London to meet the victorious fleet, but Nicholas Pocock had actually been on board one of the ships under Howe’s command. If anyone has a right to the name of naval war artist during the wars with Revolutionary and Imperial France, it is Pocock. Unlike de Loutherbourg and Rowlandson, Pocock had not set out in youth to be an artist. He was a merchant mariner who gradually realized his abilities and left the sea as a profession to follow the arts of naval victory. His grasp of naval technicalities was all that any sailor could ask for, and at his best he was a very considerable artist. Born in 1741, the son of a Bristol merchant and Mary, daughter and co-heiress of Leuchars, Fifeshire, Pocock early assumed the support of his family when his father died leaving a widow and three children. By his twenties he commanded ships owned by Richard Champion, a merchant-adventurer of Bristol and an early advocate of free trade. Sarah Champion, Richard’s sister, wrote of Pocock: “Having a fine taste for

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Edward Scriven after Isaac Pocock, Nicholas Pocock, stipple engraving, 247 ⫻ 181mm, © nmm pad 3321.

drawing, he sometimes talked of giving up the sea. Although not highly educated, he was a stranger to that failing too often attendant on want of mental culture for I have generally remarked that ignorance and conceit usually accompany each other, but this Captain Pocock’s good sense and diffidence preserved him from.”90 In 1767–68 he commanded Champion’s barque Lloyd on a voyage from Bristol to South Carolina, in 1770 he commanded the Betsey, a three-masted ship of 300 tons on a voyage to Cadiz and Minorca, and in 1776 he commanded the snow Minerva, which he took to St Kitts. A graphite self-portrait shows a young man with a thin, handsome face and what is probably his own hair, in a coat with a wide collar which it is reasonable to assume was a seaman’s blue.91 He spent the long days at sea, when his other duties permitted, in filling the ships’ log books with pictures of his commands from every angle and under the conditions they were sailing.92 James Hyndford Rawlins described them in an article in the North British Advertiser and Ladies’ Journal of 25 June 1898: A large portion of many a day at sea or in port was spent in filling up a whole page … with a minute and exquisitely drawn picture of his ship as viewed

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externally, set in a framing of minute hourly observations, in ruled columns, of her manoeuvres, sails, spread, of the direction and force of the wind, and the ship’s run of the twenty-four hours. When at a short distance from the land the coast line is drawn at length in India ink, the pigment used, and when at anchor in port a view of the town, city, and wharves is given with almost photographic accuracy … Now she is under a cloud of canvas (some thirteen greater or smaller sails) spread to catch a gentle breeze, on waves which it only ruffles; now she is in a dead calm, now she is staggering along under close-reefed canvas.93

Apparently he found time for some formal art instruction. Gilpin heard from a Mary Hartley in 1789 that Pocock had received his early training from Coplestone Warre Bampfylde, a Somerset amateur landscape painter, landscape architect, and colonel of the militia: “Bampfylde has great Genius; and his drawings, both by sea and land, are charming, & full of spirit. Pocock says that he rec’d his first instructions in landscape from Mr. Bampfylde; however, the scholar now excells the master; as may well be supposed, from his constant practice, in having made it his profession.”94 Sometime around 1778 Pocock left the merchant service and, chancing his arm, sent in a picture to the Royal Academy. Reynolds was sufficiently impressed by the work that he wrote Pocock a letter that must have delighted the self-made artist: “Leicester Fields, May 4th 1780. Dear Sir, Your picture came too late for the exhibition. It is much beyond what I expected from a first essay in oil colours.”95 As a teacher, he went on to criticize Pocock’s use of colour, and he recommended that he combine landscape with his ship painting, but Pocock certainly was not discouraged. His career as a war artist began almost from that date. It appears that, in some capacity, he joined the battle fleet in the West Indies in the later years of the American Revolutionary War. In 1788 he exhibited at the Academy a picture first described as Representation of the action between the British and French fleets on the 26th January, 1782, off Basse Terre, St. Christopher’s, later referred to as the Repulse of the French Fleet under De Grasse by Sir Samuel Hood’s Fleet at St. Kitts in January 1782, and now catalogued in the National Maritime Museum as The Battle of Frigate Bay, 26 January 1782.96 It is unlikely that he had viewed the action in any other capacity than that of an artist, and likely that he then returned to England, because he exhibited four pictures at the Academy show at Somerset House in 1782: three water-

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colours and an oil painting. In the general excitement, he married a Bristol girl, Anne Evans. They left Bristol in 1789 and settled in London at 12 Great George Street, Westminster. In the course of his life Pocock exhibited a total of 113 pictures at the Royal Academy, but he was never to be a central figure in the world of the arts. Of his contribution to the 1794 Exhibition, Captain Jonis, in His Majesty’s Packet, Chesterfield, Rescuing the Crew of a Ship that was Sinking, Williams/Pasquin wrote caustically: “There are three positions, which puzzled exceedingly the fourth Henry of France; and those were, to know what religion he should die; whether Queen Elizabeth of England was chaste, and if the Prince of Orange had any courage. My solicitude at present is more limited, it is chiefly confined to the supposition by what means this gentleman [i.e., Pocock] could be self-persuaded to become an artist.”97 The sailors, however, were much more supportive. Pocock attracted the patronage of many naval officers, including Admiral Viscount Hood and the erratic Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald. Cochrane obtained rank as Post Captain in 1801, was struck off the Navy List in 1814, and after an extraordinary career in the service of the Chileans, Brazilians, and Greeks in their wars for independence, was reinstated in the Royal Navy in 1832 to end his life as an Admiral. Pocock and his wife also entertained such socialites as the actors Sarah Siddons and John and Maria Kemble. His family increased, eventually to seven sons and two daughters. In 1790 Pocock completed a large bird’s eye view of Woolwich yard of almost the same dimensions as the views Farington finished in 1794 of Chatham and Deptford yards.98 Like Farington’s work, Pocock’s was probably a Navy Board commission. It is also possible that Pocock undertook the ships in Farington’s pictures, although there is no mention of that in Farington’s diary. It is not known whether the Admiralty commissioned him to undertake pictures of events at sea after the outbreak of war, or whether he simply asked a naval friend to take him as a passenger. However it was, his presence with the Channel Fleet in the early summer of 1794, on board hm Frigate Pegasus commanded by Robert Barlow, put him at the centre of the action from 28 May to 1 June. During that time Pocock kept a wonderfully clear log of the manoeuvring and engagements, and illustrated it with four annotated action sketches.99 These he drew from a bird’s-eye perspective, which might have been facilitated by climbing the rigging, but were nonetheless extrapolations from his own perspective. Pocock also painted a series of graphite

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and watercolour sketches of the battle and its aftermath.100 These may well have been executed during the battle and during the following days, because they have an immediacy about them which suggests that they were painted while his visual memory was still unclouded. They are at once more finished and more impressionistic than are the sketches in his log, and employ a more naturalistic quarterdeck perspective. The National Maritime Museum, which possesses the log, also possesses two of Pocock’s painting of the battle: H.M.S. Brunswick and the Vengeur at the Battle of the First of June, 1794, signed and dated in 1796, and a much later painting, H.M.S. Defence … Both are carefully drawn and exciting sea pieces.101 In 1846, fifty-four years after the event, Admiral Sir Richard Strachan believed that Pocock painted the Brunswick, Vengeur, and Achille in the First of June Action on the basis of eye-witness accounts. He wrote that Pocock had “got his information on the subject from Lord Howe, who, with Lord Nelson, Lord Gambier, & others used to make slight sketches, of their different actions, & bring them to Mr. Pocock and stand over him, while he sketched them.” He noted that Pocock’s son Isaac said that “his Father went to Portsmouth to see the ships and their prizes soon after Lord Howe’s Victory while the Royal Family were there.”102 But it is not inconsistent with Pocock’s having been in the battle himself that he should have sought to obtain information from officers in Howe’s fleet who had a closer and informed perspective of local actions. It is likely that when the fleet arrived in England on 13 June he hurried home, and that he went back to Portsmouth on the twenty-sixth with the royal party to interview officers on other ships and to make sketches. At the time Isaac had been twelve years old. Pocock had developed a technique for working up reliable pictures which was based on questioning witnesses and providing them with aids to memory. First he established a plot of ship positions, and chose a point of perspective which both revealed a decisive moment in the action and also made a good picture. He then made a detailed sketch and invited the officer who commissioned the picture of his hours of ordeal and triumph to indicate any changes that seemed to be warranted. There survives a note written by Strachan to Pocock concerning the details of a painting he was commissioned to make of Strachan’s battle with Admiral Dumanoir on 4/5 November 1805 following the battle of Trafalgar. There also survives an unsigned sketch for this picture, which shows that Pocock adjusted his tactical disposition of ships by a cut-and-paste method.103

Nicholas Pocock, Ushant 1 June 1794. Queen Charlotte and Queen, watercolour c. 1794, 180 ⫻ 317mm, © nmm pad 8703.

There can be no question but that Pocock’s work was usually satisfactory to the sailors. He was not especially observant of the sea itself, however, and his compositions fell short of the artistic objective of expressing the universal through depiction of the particular. His workmanlike approach to picture making is evident from a letter he wrote to a student in which he included a palette of stock colours that he said he used routinely to make his sea pieces.104 Some of the technical support that he obtained for his picture of H.M.S. Brunswick and the Vengeur is still preserved. Filed with his own journal is a letter from Lieutenant Rowland Bevan, who was second in the Brunswick, and another written by Lieutenant William Gage Kemble, third of the Brunswick, who wrote that “he could wish to see a ship of the line become the subject of our artists, and with your permission I shall give you one of that description which will I believe be generally allowed both by the Nation and the British Fleet to deserve a distinguished birth from the hands of the painter, sculptor and engraver.” Bevan’s and Kemble’s journals of the action also survive.105 For the opening of the first volume of the Naval Chronicle the editor, the Reverend James Stanier Clarke, chose a biographical memoir of Earl Howe and illustrated it with prints made from Pocock’s drawings. Plate 1 represented “the Queen Charlotte, on the 29th of May 1794, upon the starboard tack, under double-reefed topsails, having led through the

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Nicholas Pocock, H.M.S. Brunswick and the Vengeur at the Battle of the First of June, 1794, 55⬙ ⫻ 75⬙, © nmm bhc 0471

French line of battle. This view is supposed to be taken from the eastward, in order to shew the extent of the enemy’s line, which is on the larboard tack. The manner of passing through it is exemplified by the Bellerophon, Rear Admiral Paisley, whose ship is firing on both sides, as she passes.” And plate 5 was of “Earl Howe breaking the French Line of Battle on the 1st of June.”106 Pocock’s journal description of the action at 9:00 o’clock that morning shows why he did not make de Loutherbourg’s mistake of placing the Queen Charlotte where “it would have been her fault for letting the Montagne escape”:

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At 9 the Enemy began firing on the Headmost part of our Centre, & a Cannonade throughout the Centre & Van immediately took place & shortly after in most parts of Our Rear, The Queen Charlotte for some time desisted firing, She not being able to reach the Montagne, the Latter endeavouring to Draw aHead, but the Gallant Charlotte at this Period tho fired at by Several of the Enemy at the time, Set Her TopGallantSails & push’d through the Line, with the Signal flying for Closer Action. Soon after she had got Close to the Montagne’s Quarter [she commenced] firing into her and was endeavouring to come alongside, but in coming to the wind after passing Her Antagonist’s Stern, we saw Her Foretopmast go, which enabled the Montagne of course to Shoot ahead & get Clear of Her.

The caption for plate 20, which was published in volume two, is typical of Pocock’s exacting efforts at historical accuracy: Position of the Van Squadron of the British Fleet, at the close of the glorious action of the First of June 1794. Taken from the windward side. The object of this sketch is to represent his Majesty’s ship Leviathan, commanded by the Right Honourable Lord Hugh Seymour, in the exact situation in which she appeared after a most desperate engagement with L’Amerique; the latter had veered, with the intention of hauling her wind, to escape; which in attempting to effect, all her masts went by the board: she is accordingly thus introduced, with the Leviathan on her larboard quarter, giving a last broadside. The Russell, Captain J.W. Payne, is seen ahead of L’Amerique, totally disabled in her rigging, engaging a French ship of the Line, which was edging down to join the French Van. On the left is the Royal Sovereign, Admiral Graves, totally disabled both in her sails and rigging, having engaged a Three Decker, which she drove out of the Line. The wind about S.S.W.

Plate 31, published in volume three, was the view of the Brunswick and Le Vengeur: The Brunswick having cut loose from Le Vengeur, is pouring into her bows a last, and raking broadside: the latter is dismasted, water logged, and sinking. The Brunswick is obliged to keep before the wind; having eight lowerdeck ports shot away, and many shot in the hull; her masts, and bowsprit are also so much wounded, as to render it impossible to haul to the wind, without great danger of losing them. The van of the French fleet passing to windward of her, and to leeward of the Queen, entirely separated the Brunswick

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from the rest of the fleet; and for this reason she would have found it utterly impracticable to have joined, even if she had been in a condition to have hauled the wind; – this obliged the Brunswick to bear away for England, where she first arrived with the glorious news of Lord Howe’s victory.

After returning to Spithead, Pocock continued to sketch. Plate 4 in the Naval Chronicle was a “view of Spithead, with Lord Howe’s Fleet and the prizes (taken on the 1st of June 1794) in the state they appeared under jury masts, from the original sketch by Mr. Pocock. The Isle of Wight is represented in distant perspective. The ships are correct portraits. Names of the Prizes: a Impetueux dd Sans Pareille b L’Amerique e Le Juste c L’Achille f Le Northumberland. The Queen Charlotte, Lord Howe’s flag ship, is nearly in the centre of the fleet.” Plate 3 was “a distant view of the outer harbour of Brest, taken from on board the the Impetueux in 1797.” By that date Impetueux had been taken into service in the Royal Navy. Together with de Loutherbourg’s sketches, these pictures constitute a unique record of a battle in the age of sail. The Naval Chronicle continued to publish until a few years after the end of war, and Pocock provided many of its illustrations. Amongst its pictures of engagements it published a wonderful series of woodcut prints of dockyard scenes, such as the burming of a hull with flaming torches, some of which were credited to Pocock.

 Apparently no attempt was made to stage a representation of the Glorious First of June in the Eidophusikon, but Robert Barker made it the subject of one of the earliest exhibitions in his panoramic theatre. Barker’s idea differed from de Loutherbourg’s because it depended entirely on trompe-l’oeil painting on a curved surface. Its circular representation of the entire skyline was rather scandalous because it required that many of Gilpin’s dicta respecting the “picturesque” be ignored. Apparently Thomas Hearne, the topographical draughtsman, had sketched a circular panoramic view of Derwentwater in 1777 when he and Farington had been guests of Sir George Beaumont. By the 1790s, however, Beaumont was a self-proclaimed “Tsar of Taste” and dismissed panorama painting as injurious to artists and their public. John Constable, the landscape painter, was also to be critical. He wrote his friend Dun-

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thorn in May 1803 that “great principles are neither expected nor looked for in this mode of describing nature.” Barker, he wrote, “views nature minutely and cunningly but with no greatness or breadth.”107 To start with, a series of works were painted on paper, carefully drawn to give the appearance of depth. According to the obituary for Barker’s younger son, Henry Aston, who worked with his father, “the greatest difficulty remained. The drawings being made on flat surfaces, when placed together in a circle the horizontal lines appeared curved instead of straight, unless on the exact level of the eye; and to meet this difficulty Mr. Barker had to invent a system of curved lines peculiarly adapted to the concave surface of his picture, which should appear straight when viewed from a platform at a certain level in the centre.”108 Barker had taken his first effort, a view of the Edinburgh skyline, to London. Reynolds had not been impressed when showed the work in a studio, but Barker had nonetheless patented the idea. He also patented the design for a theatre that would enhance the illusion by obscuring the edges of the panorama at top and bottom, and direct the overhead natural lighting only on the picture itself. In the spring of 1789 he exhibited his Edinburgh panorama in a room on the Haymarket, and in 1792 he exhibited his next effort, a view of London from the Albion Mills south of Blackfriars based on sketches by his son Henry Aston. This was so successful that it brought an apology from Sir Joshua, who admitted that the panorama proved it was “capable of producing effects, and representing nature in a manner far superior to the limited scale of pictures in general.” There is a story that Reynolds had said to Barker that “he would cheerfully leave his bed at any time in the night to inspect such a work of art,” and that when he heard it was ready for viewing he left his breakfast table and walked to the Haymarket in his dressing gown and slippers to see it.109 Benjamin West also expressed his enthusiasm for Barker’s panorama, and may even have been an investor in the project. Reynolds’s and West’s recommendations justified Barker’s taking a lease on property in Leicester Place, on Cranbourne Street, and building his theatre with a lower floor providing room for a panorama ninety feet in diameter, and an upper floor with a smaller panorama. In 1801 the architect Robert Mitchell published a drawing showing a section of the panorama gallery, and a miniature version of the design has been erected in the Victoria and Albert Museum.110 Barker’s first production in the new site was a full-circle view of the Grand Fleet at Spithead. Farington’s opinion was that it was “badly

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painted but ingeniously shewn.”111 Success was assured when George III and Queen Charlotte came to see it. Henry Aston recalled: “Lord Harcourt was the lord-in-waiting. I exhibited the picture to the royal party, whose easy affability soon removed the alarm I felt in having to attend upon them. The king asked many questions; and when answered, turned round to Lord Harcourt, to whom he gave the answer verbatim, always beginning with ‘He says’ so-and-so. His majesty had a large goldheaded cane, which he pointed with, and sometimes put into my hand, making me stoop down in a line with it, to be informed of an object so small that I could not otherwise understand him.” The viewing platform was made to resemble the quarterdeck of a frigate, and Queen Charlotte is reported to have said that the picture made her feel seasick. It obviously made commercial sense to follow this success with a panorama of the Glorious First of June. The notice in The Times stated: “Captain Barlow of the Pegasus, Lord Howe’s repeating frigate, and Captain Seymour, who was Signal Officer with Captain Barlow at that time … obligingly furnished Mr. Barker with a correct plan of the situation of every Ship, taken the first moment that they could be discovered from [the] smoak.” As it had been Pegasus which accommodated Pocock, Barker’s perspective must have been very similar to his. A broadsheet published as a key to the panorama shows that the spectator was placed in the middle of the battle at 1 p.m. on the 1st of June, between the enemy lines but somewhat closer to Howe’s flagship, the Queen Charlotte.112 The Times placed the scene at the time “when the French had fled from the English, and forming on the starboard tack, had commenced as they passed, a heavy fire on the Queen from nine sail of their line. Observers may suppose themselves on the open Sea, in the centre of both Fleets, and so near the Queen Charlotte as to afford an advantageous view of one of the finest Ships in the Navy.”113 A technical drawing of Queen Charlotte’s beakhead in Henry Aston’s sketchbook is more correct than interesting, but the finished artistry of some of his topographical drawings in the same book suggests that the panorama would have been a very capable work of art.114 In late June 1795 the panorama theatre was ready to open on the new show. The effect must have been very impressive, especially to people who had never before seen the news so vividly portrayed.



Robert Mitchell, Plans and Views, Section of the Leicester Square Panorama Gallery, Plate 14. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Other artists were quick to imitate Barker’s success. In late July 1795 a notice appeared in The Times of the opening of The Naumachia, or First of June 1794: “The artist has so ingeniously contrived the point of sight, that the spectators may fancy themselves in the centre of action, more particularly at the precise moment when the amazing force of powder, and the destructive effect of a well-directed ball may be discovered.”115 The panorama became an important means of conveying current events to the public. Robert Ker Porter was another who tried his hand, very capably, at panoramas. He did not attempt a naval subject but exhibited at the Lyceum three panoramas of battles in the eastern theatre. In 1802 Barker’s eldest son, Thomas Edward, who was not an artist but had helped his father, and Ramsay Richard Reinagle, who had painted in the Barker Gallery, went into partnership and established a panorama gallery in the Strand. There is no record of whether another grand old man of marine art in the 1790s, Robert Dodd, visited Spithead after the battle, but in 1795

This Position of the Ships, as Exhibited in the Panorama, Leicester Square, was correctly taken at one o’clock, P.M. on the First of June, 1794. pro adm 7/884.

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he painted for the Half-Way House tavern in Whitechapel a wide view of the Sinking of the Vengeur du Peuple at the Battle of the Glorious First of June in 1794 measuring 76⬙ by 134⬙.116 Dodd had been born in 1748 and had first exhibited in 1780 at the Society of Artists, and at the Royal Academy in 1782. He was both a painter and an engraver, and came increasingly to undertake the entire burden of painting, engraving, and publishing pictures of the naval war up to 1800, when he exhibited at the Academy for the last time. His output was prodigious. His treatment of the sea, unfortunately, was anything but naturalistic. Dodd’s oceans are filled with frilly waves dancing virtually at random. The size of his First of June suggests that the Half-Way House hoped to attract the panorama crowds. Dodd had to paint it on location. Dodd undertook another and much larger panorama the next year, painting a hundred-foot canvas of the fleet at Spithead. He chose to portray the events of 1 May 1795, when the fleet was forced to get under sail to escape a fire that had broken out in the Boyne. This work was exhibited at the “Campus Nautica” in the Great Room, Spring Gardens.117

 Pocock’s pictures amount to documentary evidence; de Loutherbourg, Brown, and Cleveley painted the great lasting monuments to the battle; and Barker’s panorama brought it to the public in a new and powerful way. But these were not alone in the field, and the work of other artists should not pass entirely unrecognized. Amongst the minor prints made of the Battle of the First of June was a plot of fleet movements, with a vignette of the battle, which was executed by Richard Livesay.118 Livesay had been one of Benjamin West’s pupils, and he had worked for, and resided with Hogarth’s widow. He acquired patronage in the highest quarter when in 1790 West hired him to copy pictures at Windsor Castle. Livesay was asked to teach drawing to King George’s children. On Howe’s return to Spithead, he was among those who sketched the prizes, and he obtained Bowen’s assistance in drawing the plot. This work, which he completed as a coloured aquatint, was published by a woman art publisher, Elizabeth Walker.119 Livesay, continued to execute prints of naval actions during the next few years, sometimes with the help of a John Livesay, who was presumably a son.120 His interest, both royal and naval, led to his appointment in 1796 as drawing master at the Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth.121

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Another whose contribution to the arts of naval victory began with the Battle of the Glorious First of June was Farington’s friend Robert Smirke, who used Farington as an intermediary to persuade Admiral Lord Gardner to sit for his portrait. This was to be included in a commemorative print that was commissioned by Robert Bowyer.122 Paul Sandby had described Smirke as “a tall stout man, [who] has very great talents.”123 Raimbach’s praise was also generous: Robert Smirke is a name that may not be passed over by me without a tribute of respect and acknowledgment for advantages obtained in the repeated communications I necessarily had with him, professionally. Mr. Smirke is, I believe, a native of Cumberland, and was born about the year 1760. At an early age he was apprenticed to a coach-herald painter; and his detractors were accustomed to say that his pictures looked like coach-panels. Almost all artists in their outset have to struggle with indigence, as well as obscurity, and Smirke was no exception to the general rule. On the contrary, his probation was perhaps longer than ordinary; and, till Boydell’s great enterprise afforded him a favourable opportunity of showing of what he was capable, his chief or only occupation was making small designs for the Novelist’s Magazine, &c., as Stothard had done before him. Those who remember the Shakespeare Gallery will bear testimony to the admirable talent displayed in Smirke’s pictures, wherein, with subjects greatly varied, he proved himself a master equally of pathos, humour, beauty, grace, and dignity: while, in regard to execution, the drawing, colouring, composition, and effect, left scarcely any thing to be desired. He is still living, (1836) but has long ceased to exercise his art. He is author of two satires, Midas, and the Catalogue Raisonné of the British Institute.124

Inevitably, Williams alias Pasquin was less supportive: “This gentleman was originally apprenticed to a coach painter, and is a striking proof how very difficult it is, even with men possessing more than ordinary talents, to overcome those habits which the mind, as it may be urged, weds, on her first struggles, to gain the applauses of the discerning part of Society … The pernicious effects arising from the ductility of mind, are particularly exemplified in Mr. Smirke’s best productions, which all smack of the first principles of his education; and whether he paints on canvas or wood, the hard manner which all who execute on coach pannels imbibe is evident.”125

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Of course, Pasquin was not altogether wrong in his judgment, but the kindlier Raimbach was closer to the truth. Smirke’s commemorative poster is executed with a brilliant clarity, which he no doubt learned as a heraldic coach painter, and is a strong work of art for that very reason.126 As early as 22 July 1794 Farington had remarked that Bowyer had already sold one hundred subscriptions for the print in Portsmouth.127 When visiting Smirke in December 1796 Farington met Lewis Pingo, who had been commissioned by the Admiralty to design the medal for the Glorious First, for which he was paid £150 guineas.128 In December 1802 Farington was to record in his diary that he had called on Gardner and looked at his collection of naval drawings from the Battle of the Glorious First of June, and heard his account of his taking the Queen through the enemy line.129 No doubt his collection included a copy of Smirke’s engraving.

Three S t Vi n c e n t a n d C a m p e r d own

Lord Howe’s victory on the Glorious First had enormously cheered the British public, but it did not by any account put an end to the perils that had to be faced. The importance attached to the paintings of de Loutherbourg and Brown by the rich and the beautiful can to some extent be attributed to the continuing need for psychological reassurance. This need can also be discerned in the commission given to John Rigaud to paint the ceiling in the Court Room at Trinity House. The building, to a design by Samuel Wyatt, had been constructed between 1793 and 1796. When it was finished Rigaud, who had been elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1784 and specialized in interior decoration, was asked to express “the security and prosperity of the British Nation, arising from the power of its Navy and the extent of its Commerce.” In a letter that appears to have been begun on 7 May 1796 but continued later, he described his design: In the cove, on the side over the windows, is represented the British Neptune triumphant, surrounded by Sea Horses and attended by Tritons. He holds in one hand the Trident, and with the other the Shield of Britain. Cannon and implements of war surround him, and some Geniuses are waving the Standard of Great Britain. On the opposite side, that over the chimney, Britannia is seated on a rock, and receiving in her lap the produce of distant Countries, Sea Nymphs are arriving from different parts loaded with wealth, and Seamen are pouring the fruits of Commerce on the British Shore. The Boys, with torches in their hands, are emblematic of the lights round the coast, by which its Navigation is secured. On each of the other sides are two of the principal Rivers of England, the Thames and the Medway, the Humber and the Severn, as supporters to two Medallions, each representing a Ship in full sail, &c. In the Centre or flat part

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of the Ceiling is an Armillary Sphere, carried by flying Geniuses, while a few others, with the instruments of Astronomy, are disposed among the clouds.1

Such lavish public display was recognized as being important to public morale. The form it took, of a mythological ceiling painting, was far removed from the austere policies of twentieth-century war administrations, but the commission was similar in principle to the efforts during those later wars to continue the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. Rigaud had been “employed two months at home, to make the design and the large cartoon; and began on the spot on the first of January, and continued without interruption of a single hour to this day; having an apartment in Crutched-friars for the purpose of being near.” Amongst the artists to whom he subcontracted was Robert Cleveley, who was employed to put the finishing touches to the ships. “The whole,” wrote Rigaud some time later, “was extremely well received of the Artists; about twenty of them came to see it on the 27th of May, with whom we had a dinner together on the occasion, when Mr. Court, the Secretary of the Trinity House, expressed the satisfaction of the Board, and of the public in general.” Farington was one of the company, but he was not in fact unreserved in his opinion of Rigaud’s work. He was more impressed, or said he was, by Wyatt’s architecture. It is not impossible that his opinion was influenced by Rigaud’s notoriously difficult personality. When in 1804 the old king, George III, refused to ratify the election of the “democratical” Robert Smirke as keeper of the Royal Academy, and made it clear that he would prefer Rigaud, the academicians selected Henry Fuseli. Following that defeat, Rigaud was to become leader of a cabal that elected Samuel Wyatt’s younger brother, James, president in 1805, when West thought it in his interest to decline office. But all that was for the future. After viewing the ceiling and building, all the artists and the architect went off to dinner together, and as usual Farington noted the seating plan in his diary.2 Britannia’s palate could at times be as important as was her palette. Unfortunately, Trinity House was bombed during the blitz in the Second World War and Rigaud’s work was destroyed. The present building was constructed behind the eighteenth-century facade, which alone survived.



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Events at sea in the next few years were not to provide major inspiration for any of the most important artists, but all the same, the Mediterranean, West Indies, and Atlantic theatres were active, and there were moments of excitement and personal triumph. The West Indian sugar islands were of tremendous importance to European economies, and their control was always contested. The liberation of slaves in the French colonies by the Republic lent urgency to the interest of English planters in capturing the French islands before their own slave populations took the hint and rebelled. It also brought the French islanders to declare for the Bourbons. Soon after the outbreak of war, the small peacetime squadron in the West Indies had been reinforced with seven ships of the line under Rear Admiral Alan Gardner, Farington’s friend. And in the spring of 1794 Vice Admiral Sir John Jervis and Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Grey were sent to capture Martinique, St Lucia, and Guadeloupe. William Anderson was one painter who took an interest in this subject. He was a Scot, born in 1754, and is believed to have been a shipwright before he became a professional painter. It is unknown whether he had had any formal art training before he moved to London in 1787 and began to exhibit paintings at the Royal Academy. A sketch book of his from the period 1792–94 in the Victoria and Albert Museum shows the care that he, a former dock worker, took to get the details of gear well drawn.3 The naval historian Laird Clowes suggests that the sketches were probably “studies made while the ships were building and fitting out, in preparation for the builders’ pictures which were then popular.”4 A print by Anderson purporting to be of the Battle of the Glorious First of June was inserted in the Register of the Times on 21 June 1794, but this can only have been a recycled piece without any pretense of doing more than mark the event.5 In its neat expression and selection of detail, and in the grace of its design, Anderson’s work was in a class with that of Nicholas Pocock. His working methods also appear to have been similar to Pocock’s. There survive two sketches of a corvette near a rocky coast which Anderson sent to a patron for comment on their accuracy prior to painting a finished picture.6 It has been noted that his work is more impressionistic when working from life. Anderson’s painting of Troops embarking near Greenwich, 1793, probably setting off on the voyage to the West Indies, is a fairly rough representation of the transport ships.7 Two years later he painted The Capture of Fort Louis, Martinique, 20 March 1794 and Landing Party

William Anderson, The Capture of Fort Louis, Martinique, 20 March 1794, 36⬙ ⫻ 50⬙, © nmm bhc 0468.

on the Beach during the Attack on Fort Royal, 20 March 1794. Both are convincing representations of coastal assault, but there is no evidence to suggest that Anderson had actually been there.8 Edward Dayes regarded Anderson highly. In his Professional Sketches, which was published in 1805 he wrote: “His style of colouring is clear and bright, and his aerial perspective is well understood. The handling is clear, firm and decisive: but of his works, the smaller are by far the best: some of them are of the very first degree of eminence.” However, he also added: “It does not appear that his nautical knowledge is equal to that of some of his contemporaries.”9

 In North American waters there was little fighting at this time, but the Royal Navy had to patrol the American coast to defend British mercantile shipping and to intercept French merchantmen. This could be arduous and tedious work. The routine operations in North America did not

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interest the major artists, but in the National Maritime Museum is a series of watercolour sketches by Lieutenant George Tobin. Tobin, who was related to Nelson’s wife, Fanny, had been commissioned in November 1790, and sailed with Captain William Bligh in the second breadfruit expedition to Tahiti. The pictures he executed in watercolour in his log, and in unique works, during that expedition of scenes in Australia and Tahiti are lively, and clear, and give a strong feeling of reliability.10 In November 1793 he joined the 38-gun frigate Thetis commanded by Captain Alexander Cochrane, and spent most of the next five years on the Halifax and Bermuda stations. The first of the four primitive, but very convincing, sketches shows Thetis aground off Currituck island, North Carolina, a few days before Christmas 1794. The sequels show the evolutions to tow Thetis clear, and finally her careening so that her bottom could be repaired.11 Tobin later made the step to captain in the general promotion at the time of the Peace of Amiens, and was posted as flag captain to Cochrane in Northumberland in 1804. He commanded the frigate Princess Charlotte from September 1805 to July 1814.12 Another artist to see naval action in the theatre of the western Atlantic was the American John Trumbull, who had served his fellow rebels during the Revolution by sketching the British defences of Boston. He had been appointed a second aide-de-camp to General Washington but had resigned in 1777 and come to London to work under Benjamin West alongside Copley and Brown. Trumbull made a name for himself painting battle subjects, but soon after the outbreak of war in 1793 he had taken a position as secretary to John Jay, who came to London to negotiate the “Jay” treaty intended to resolve trade disputes and concerns about British commercial posts south and west of the Great Lakes. Farington met him on 20 August 1796 and wrote of their conversation: I expressed the satisfaction I felt that there seemed to be a good understanding between England & America. He angrily replied He did not know how long it may continue, if the Commanders of English Vessels are permitted to insult the American Ships as they do. He was stopped on his passage and notwithstanding He shewed all the papers required by the regulations, yet His Ship was kept an Hour in Custody, & threatened to be carried in as a prize. The Captain of the English Ship at last let her go, on Trumbull stating that when He landed He would make it a public affair.13

Sixteen more years of such irritants were to end in a declaration of war by the United States.

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 Control of the Mediterranean was vital to the efforts of the Austrians, Spaniards, and Neapolitans to coordinate their military efforts. In late August 1793 the people of Toulon had become so alarmed at the excesses of the revolutionaries that they invited Vice Admiral Samuel Lord Viscount Hood, the British Mediterranean fleet commander, to occupy the town and dockyard. British, Spanish, and allied troops were put ashore, and the French Toulon fleet was moved into the inner basin. A difficult situation was made hopeless by disagreements between the British and Spaniards. The army of the Republic, with artillery commanded by the young Napoleon Buonaparte, succeeded in driving in the defences on the hills behind the town. Under fire, Toulon was evacuated on 14 December. Amidst the cannonade, the shouts of the invading soldiers, and the explosion of two powder ships, its leading citizens were obliged to scramble to find places in one of the British warships or transports. British artists were not drawn to this subject, but the arrival of the refugees at Southampton formed the subject for another Rowlandson drawing of naval interest, one of his many anti-Jacobin and anti-Bonapartist opinion-makers.14 Many of the French emigrés were to find a means of subsistence as a result of the practical philanthropy of Rudolph Ackermann. He had been born in Saxony in 1764, the son of a coach builder, and had lived ten years in Paris before going to England in 1795. Having married an English woman, he established a print shop at 96 Strand in London, later moving to number 101. During the next years he provided opportunities for emigrés, first those from France and then others from Spain, to support themselves by the sale of fine goods in his “Repository of the Arts.” He prospered in doing so, but his philanthropy was genuine. After the armies of the coalition crushed Napoleon at the battle of Leipzig in October 1813, Ackermann was to spend two years engaged in raising £200,000 by public subscription and parliamentary grant to relieve the distress in Germany. His was one of the first shops to be illuminated by gas lighting, he patented a means of waterproofing clothing, and in 1817 he was to bring fine art lithography to England. Philipp André of Offenbach had imported the mechanical equipment to England in 1801, but at first it was looked on as a nasty foreign invention. Amongst Ackermann’s publications were to be many naval prints, including several by Rowlandson, who would visit his shop almost daily to make topical drawings that would be converted into prints.

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Even before the evacuation of Toulon, Admiral Lord Hood had ordered the occupation of Corsica, which was restive under its French yoke.15 On 21 May 1794 the French garrison at Bastia surrendered after a siege, and on 10 August Calvi was taken after another difficult siege, during which Captain Horatio Nelson received the wound that destroyed his right eye. In both these sieges the navy contrived to hoist battering cannon hundreds of feet up nearly vertical slopes to fire into the French works. From Corsican anchorages, the Mediterranean fleet was employed in support of the allied armies and to contain the remnant of the French fleet at Toulon which had escaped destruction or seizure. Vice Admiral William Hotham succeeded Hood in command. He encountered the Toulon force in March 1795, when over a thousand men were killed or wounded in a passing action, and again in July. Both times he failed to make the most of his advantage, being glad enough to make no major mistake. This relative failure was to be an important contributing factor to the defeat of the Austrian army on the Riviera. The only bright side from the British point of view was the spirited part played by Nelson in command of the 64-gun Agamemnon in attacking the 80-gun ship Ça Ira during the March encounter. Years later, when Pocock was commissioned by Clarke and John M’Arthur to provide plates for their Life of Admiral Lord Nelson, K.B., he made a painting of the Agamemnon engaging with the Ça Ira within gunshot of a tremendous force. The book was set up in type in 1809, but it was June 1810 before Pocock supplied his pictures, and July before he sent this one, and a “view of St. John’s Harbour, Antigua taken on the Spot by myself,” which had been asked for in addition to the original request.16 Another picture relating to Vice Admiral Hotham’s actions was made years later by Frederick Cruikshank. He painted at least two beautiful watercolour portrait of John Adams, alias Wilkinson, “a native of Whitehaven,” who was Boatswain’s Mate of the Agamemnon while that ship was commanded by Captain Nelson.17 A second of Nelson’s old and personal servants, Thomas Allen, was to have his portrait painted by John Burnet, who also engraved a portrait of Farington’s friend Admiral Gardner.18 Burnet was a Scot, the son of the Surveyor-General of Excise for Scotland. He had been apprenticed to the engraver Robert Scott, and studied at the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh before coming south to London.

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It seems likely that Pocock joined the Mediterranean fleet at some point, because he produced for the early numbers of the Naval Chronicle several topographical pictures of locations within the Mediterranean fleet area. Plate 14 is a view of Bastia in Corsica, plate 15 a view of James Fort at Accra on the coast of Guinea, plate 16 a view of Mahon Harbour on the Island of Minorca, plate 17 a particularly fine view of the Road of Lisbon with the castle of Balem, and plate 21 a view of Toulon – all by Pocock. The Toulon sketch is from seaward, thus giving no hint as to whether it was done during the British occupation or from a blockading vessel after the withdrawal in December 1793. The Mediterranean drawings, however, may have been based on sketches made during Pocock’s years as a merchant skipper, and the West Indian views may have been based on others made during the American War. If Pocock was in the Mediterranean in 1795, he returned home that winter. On 26 January 1796 the troop transport Dutton was blown by a gale onto a lee shore near Plymouth, and Captain Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, managed to get lines on board to rescue the crew and passengers. Pocock made a picture of the subject showing men on shore, left side, heaving on the ropes attached to the stern of the wreck. In the foreground are survivors being blown by the gale. It is not known whether Pocock was a witness, but it is known that he was at home at the time of the Westminster election on 14 June, when he cast his vote for Admiral Gardner, who was doing his duty by running against the radical democrat Charles James Fox.19 From Pocock’s original picture of the Dutton, an engraving was made by Robert Pollard which was published by John Jeffreys, 15 September 1796.20 Considering the time it takes to engrave a plate, Pocock’s drawing must have been completed the previous spring. He may have stayed in England for some time after that, as a large bird’s-eye view of Plymouth Dockyard attributed to him, probably another Navy Board contract, is dated 1798.21 It is a happy thought that if Pocock did witness the wreck, he might have met the young Samuel Prout who was then twelve years old. Reportedly, the sight of the wreck, and perhaps the meeting with a professional naval artist, so affected Prout that he drew dozens of sketches of it, and went on to become a topographical artist who painted some very interesting pictures of the postwar navy.



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Hotham’s drawn battles amounted to French strategic victories. The French Army of Italy commanded by General Buonaparte was left with enough freedom of movement to enter Milan on 15 May 1796 and the port of Livorno on 25 June.22 Livorno had been the principal supply port for the British Mediterranean squadron. In June 1795 Spain had been forced to conclude peace with France, and in August 1796, by the Treaty of San Ildefonso, the imbecile Charles IV was committed to war against Britain and Portugal. The Spanish fleet, although woefully badly manned, was large enough to make the danger of its cooperating with the Toulon fleet a serious threat. Worse, the Queen of Naples, Maria Christina, warned that a plan had been developed to use the combined naval strength of France, Spain, and the Netherlands to make possible the invasion of the British Isles. It was these changed circumstances, and the arrival of Vice Admiral Jervis as Mediterranean fleet commander, which precipitated the next of the great naval battles. The threat in home waters, and the impossible odds in the Mediterranean, necessitated a change of operational focus for the Mediterranean fleet from the Gulf of Lyons to Cadiz. Jervis sailed to Gibraltar and thence took station off Cape St Vincent, watching the approach to Cadiz. The evacuation of British forces on Corsica in October was entrusted to Nelson, who was just able to rejoin Jervis off Cape St Vincent before the morning light of 14 February 1797 revealed the Spanish fleet under Admiral Don José de Cordôva. Jervis and his fellow admiral, Edwards, “Toby Edwards, as he was called by naval friends,” had made a vivid impression on the young Raimbach when they came to Charles Hall’s studio to see the engraving he was making of Francis Cotes’s portrait of Admiral Edward Lord Hawke: “Sir J. Jervis, to my juvenile observation, contrasted strongly with his accompanying friend, Admiral Edwards. The former was refined and polished in manner, while Edwards seemed to me the beauideal of a thorough-bred and born seaman, large in person, blunt in his address, and loud, hoarse, and decided in speech.”23 Despite his “polish,” Jervis and Robert Calder, his “First Captain” or chief of staff, had drilled the Mediterranean fleet to perfection, and the battle that followed was a vindication of his methods.24 The British were heavily outnumbered by the Spaniards, but the Spanish fleet was desperately short of trained seamen and not as well drilled. Without waiting to form a regular line of battle, Jervis ordered

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his fleet to form an ad hoc line as it steered to divide the Spaniards. At a critical moment when it looked as though the Spaniards would succeed in reforming, Nelson showed his grasp of Jervis’s intentions – and his moral and physical courage – by wearing hms Captain out of line, and passing back through it, to attack the Spanish van. This placed his ship in extreme danger, confronted by seven Spanish ships, three of which were of 100 guns. Another was the only four-decker in the world, the 140-gun Santissima Trinidad. Jervis immediately signalled Captain Cuthbert Collingwood, last in the line, to leave his station and tack into Nelson’s wake to provide support. Soon, but hardly too soon for the men desperately engaged, Nelson was also supported by the British van coming down along the Spanish line. The 74-gun Captain took such a beating that she all but lost steerage way, and Nelson decided that the best part of valour would be to ram the 80-gun San Nicolas and board her. When he found himself under fire from the San Josef of 112 guns, which was close aboard the other side of the San Nicolas, he called for another boarding party, which he led himself, sword in hand: “On the quarter-deck of a Spanish First-rate, extravagant as the story may seem, did I receive the Swords of the vanquished Spaniards; which, as I received, I gave to William Fearney, one of my bargemen, who put them with the greatest sangfroid under his arm.”25 Reportedly Sir Robert Calder later remarked that Nelson’s breaking the line was unauthorized. Jervis responded: “It certainly was so … and if ever you commit such a breach of your orders, I will forgive you also.”26 Nelson was aggrieved by Jervis’s failure to mention him in his victory dispatch, and saw to his own laurels by writing an account of his triumph to the Duke of Clarence, and by supplying Colonel John Drinkwater-Bethune, who had witnessed the action, with all the detail he needed for writing a narrative. This was first published anonymously as an appendix to de Poggi’s chart of the Glorious First of June, in the form of a letter written by “a land officer” onboard hms Lively. The letter was dated at the Scilly Islands where Lively, carrying Calder bearing Jervis’s despatch, had touched on 27 February 1797.27 “This brilliant affair took place off Cape St. Vincent on the 14th of February, the anniversary of St. Valentine, who by this glorious event has almost eclipsed his brother Crispian and henceforth we must say, with the Poet: ‘He that’s outliv’d this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tiptoe when the day is nam’d, and rouse him at the name of Valentine.’”

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When the news reached London five days later, Farington and his friends spent the afternoon “merrily,” singing and toasting the victorious Admiral Jervis.28

 The only eye witnesses to produce visual records of the action were not remarkable artists. The most important was Ralph Willet Miller, the commanding officer of hms Captain. His work has a primitive quality that is attractive, but its chief importance comes from its having been undertaken by a man who was present and in a position to observe events. The two examples of his painting in the National Maritime Museum are a watercolour depicting a distant view of Bastia during the siege in May 1794, and another showing Commodore Nelson boarding the San Nicholas of 80 and the San Josef of 112, 14th February 1797.29 He undertook the sketches so as to be able to send his wife, Ann, who was known as Nancy, graphic images of his life. He was to be killed on 14 May 1799 by the accidental explosion of a collection of French shells while in command of the Theseus during the defence of Acre. Another eye witness was Lieutenant Jahleel Brenton, who served in the Barfleur at the time of the action. He was a man who had spent almost his entire life in the navy, beginning as a volunteer clerk in his father’s ship in 1777, being rated an able seaman ten years later, then a master’s mate and midshipman in 1789, before passing for lieutenant in 1790. He was to do well in the war, and go far, but his qualities as an artist were very limited, and the print engraved from his sketch by James Fittler reflects that limitation.30 Thomas Buttersworth was to become one of the more important of the minor artists of naval victory by virtue of his direct experience of the war at sea. He was serving in a ship under Jervis’s command but most probably he was not himself an eye witness of the action off Cape St Vincent. He had enlisted in the navy in the receiving ship Enterprize moored off the Tower of London on 17 August 1795 at the age of twentyseven, and received a bounty of £5 for doing so. He gave his place of birth as the Isle of Wight. He must have been a professional sailor because he was rated an able seaman when he joined the Caroline two days later. She was a new frigate fitting for sea at Deptford, and sailed from Spithead 12 August 1796 to become part of Jervis’s command. She was in the Tagus at the time of the Battle of Cape St Vincent, and then spent the summer of 1797 with the inshore squadron blockading Cadiz.

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On 26 November 1796 Buttersworth had been rated a master-at-arms, and on 1 March 1800 he was promoted to midshipman, but he was then to be invalided home from Minorca effective the seventh of May. There is some mystery about this, because Caroline was not at Minorca on that date, and Buttersworth’s name does not appear on the Minorca hospital muster list. That he was actually on board Caroline for at least part of the period is suggested by his bill with Sam Nicholson, the purser, for tobacco, but his “medical” discharge might just possibly have been a cover for something more interesting.31 Buttersworth was only to exhibit one painting at the Royal Academy, in 1813, and one other at the British Institution in 1823, but he was to be a prolific artist and quite a considerable one. He worked both in watercolour and in oils. Amongst his oeuvre were to be many pictures of the Battle of Cape St Vincent and of the subsequent operations of the inshore squadron.32 For his depictions of the battle itself he most probably had to depend on conversations with seamen in other ships, but for those of the blockade operations he could well have been working from his own experience. A large number of his paintings are in private hands and have passed through the London auction houses in the last several decades.33 His sole exhibition piece at the Academy was a painting of The Ville de Paris, Admiral Earl St.Vincent, lying-to for a pilot off the mouth of the Tagus.34 Jervis had been created Earl of St Vincent for his victory. The National Maritime Museum has several paintings by Buttersworth, including an attractive oil of The Inshore Blockading Squadron at Cadiz, July 1797.35 John Wilmerding, a scholar of American marine painting, writes enthusiastically about the Buttersworth painting, Yacht “Harriet” of the Royal Yacht Club: “The smooth modelling of the sails, the waves, and the clouds readily transmits the sturdy beauty of the sailing craft in her element. Working primarily in dark green, light tan, gray purple, and pale blue, Buttersworth at once attains variety and coherence. He controls light and shadow effectively to focus on the vessel and her movement through the water.”36

 The Battle of Cape St Vincent became a favourite for artists, and Nelson’s “patent bridge” for boarding first rates especially so. One of Pocock’s more impressive works is a large watercolour, Nelson Boarding the San Nicolas and San Joseph.37 De Loutherbourg also painted a picture

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of the subject, which was engraved on steel by J. Rogers, who also made an etching of the same picture. Both were published as the Surrender of the Spanish Admiral to Commodore Nelson on board the San Joseph Feb. 14 1797.38 The original oil has not been traced. Robert Cleveley also undertook a pair of oil paintings of this battle.39 Sir William Allen’s Battle of Cape St. Vincent was painted long after the action. Allen had been born in Edinburgh in 1782 and, after apprenticeship to a coach builder, came to London and entered the Royal Academy school. He first exhibited a painting there in 1803, but with the depressed state of the British art market, he judged his chances would be better abroad and he set out for St Petersburg. He saw a great deal of the war in Russia, including the impact on ordinary Russians of the French 1812 campaign, before returning to Edinburgh in 1814. In 1843 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture of The Battle of Waterloo from the English Side, which was purchased by the Duke of Wellington and is now at the duke’s London residence at Apsley House.40 His Cape St. Vincent in the National Maritime Museum, however, appears to have been his only naval painting and must be considered as derivative.41 Some of these artists may have carried out sketch work at the fleet anchorages, but unfortunately sketch books that would have confirmed that supposition do not seem to have survived. For details of tactical movements they were dependent on discussion with officers who had been there, and sometimes the officers themselves could be as confused about the precise position of ships in a battle as were the wretched artists. In the National Maritime Museum there is preserved a pair of sketch plots for the battle among the papers of Vice Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, who was then a relatively new post captain and had missed the battle because he had been sent to watch Toulon. He presumably made the plot after talking with his fellow captains. The British fleet was indicated by the numbers placed beside each ship, but only five were identified in the accompanying list. The first drawing is inaccurate because it shows the Culloden leading the British round the far side of the Spanish fleet, whereas Captain Troubridge in fact tacked on Admiral Jervis’s order and passed back along their engaged side. Nelson’s action in taking Captain out of the rear of the British line and engaging the leading Spaniards was roughly shown. The second drawing is a better reflection of the battle, but has failed to show Captain where Nelson had put her, alongside the San Nicolas.42 A series of more finished plots of the battle were published by I. Johnson on 25 March 1797.43

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 In the summer of 1797 Nelson was detached with a small squadron with orders to seize a treasure ship that had taken refuge in the harbour at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. This engagement was not to be a success. The British force was repulsed with heavy losses, and Nelson had his right arm shot off. He applied to King George III for a pension, and this might well have been the end of his career. So well known was he by this time that the memorial he wrote – with his left hand – was printed in facsimile for public sale.44 In February 1798 Daniel Orme published a small engraving of Nelson which was enormously successful. In May Fanny Nelson wrote to tell Horatio, who had recovered from his wound and returned to sea: “Orme must have made a great deal of money. The little picture he published of you has sold beyond description. Mrs. Tarleton as soon as she heard you were to be bought, she was determined to have you, but was told by the bookseller, he had a load of Admiral Nelson’s but had sold every one of them.”45 Understandably, the defeat at Tenerife, however it was glossed over, was not a popular subject for artists who had to count on selling their work to the public. Richard Westall was to paint a picture of Nelson Wounded at Tenerife, 24 June 1797, but only after his heroic death in the greatest victory of all, the Battle of Trafalgar. Richard Westall had been elected an associate member of the Academy in 1792, beating out Mather Brown, and elected an Academician in 1794. Paul Sandby wrote that he was “very gaudy in his colouring and has a face like a monkey.”46 Campbell Dodson, writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, dismissed Westall’s large oils as “not successful” and did not even mention his naval pictures. However, his three paintings of Nelson’s achievements and defeats in 1797, Nelson receiving the surrender of the San Nicolas, Nelson in Conflict with the Spanish Launch, July 1797, and Nelson Wounded at Tenerife, 24 June 1797, are compositionally attractive, and well painted with romantic, “scene painter’s” atmospherics. True, they are melodrama of the worst sort. All portray sailors in the heat of battle pristinely dressed and without a hair out of place. Nelson’s coxswain, who saved his life three times at the cost of terrible injury to himself, appears only in the background. A fourth picture in the series, exhibited with them at the Royal Academy in 1807, was Lord Nelson, when Second Lieutenant of the Lowestoffe frigate, Captain Locker, going to take possession of an American

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Richard Westall, Nelson in Conflict with the Spanish Launch, July 1797, © nmm bhc 2908.

Letter of Marque, during a strong gale of wind, and a heavy sea; the First Lieutenant having returned, and declared it Impracticable. No less impracticable was the picture’s title! Nelson is painted as a “superhero,” as little affected by gravity as he was by fear. Nevertheless, melodrama has always found a market. Of Westall, Edward Dayes wrote:

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Westall is an artist who, in one sense, is great in little things, as his merit lies in neatness and color; yet in the latter he is sometimes gaudy; and he too often sacrifices his subjects to handling. It is beyond all question, that the higher walks of the arts are injured by the trickery of execution, or a great show of colour; as these practices draw the attention from the subject to the painter, whose duty it should be to keep unseen … I cannot dismiss this article, without declaring, that I think his abilities by no means common: those are not trifling powers, that can carry the arts so far, after the first seven years of his time was passed with a silver engraver.47

The art print publishers J. Cadell and W. Davies were prepared to invest in the engraving of the pictures, which were offered for sale in November 1808 and May 1809.48

 Jervis’s victory off Cape St Vincent confirmed the moral superiority of the British fleet, but the naval forces of the Franco-Spanish alliance remained a serious threat. Compounding the dangers that the British had to face, the Dutch fleet had been captured frozen into the ice when the French invaded the Netherlands in 1794–95. Prince William V of Orange, Stadholder of the Netherlands, had fled to England, and a Batavian Republic was formed under the more or less direct control of Paris. The combined navies of France, Spain, and the Netherlands were still formidable if they could find the means to cooperate well together, and to overcome the training and supply problems of the French and the manpower shortages of the Spaniards. The need to counter the danger of invasion was to be a major factor in British defence planning until in 1805 that option was decisively closed for the enemy. In October 1796 Villaret-Joyeuse had been ordered to fit out the Brest fleet to land a French army under General Hoche at Bantry Bay on the West Coast of Ireland. Discipline had been restored in the fleet, but the dockyards were still desperately short of supplies, and the men lacked the training and experience to inspire confidence. Villaret-Joyeuse said so, and was replaced by Admiral Morard de Galles. The attempt failed, but due more to these deficiencies, and to the weather, than to the efforts of the Channel fleet, which was at Spithead and had had to beat its way to windward. An invasion of western Wales was defeated without a fight. Another attempt to invade Ireland was to be made in 1798,

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and there was also a threat of a landing in eastern England by a French army supported by the Dutch fleet. English cartoonists naturally exploited the theme of invasion, and the public who purchased their prints preferred to have their fears worked on with representations of French battle rafts and the crypto-Jacobins in the British opposition. Sir John Dalrymple, who is best known for his discovery of a method of making soap from herrings, commissioned Gillray to make a series of twenty plates on The Consequences of a Successful French Invasion.49 Gillray had accepted a government pension and stopped his direct attacks on William Pitt, the prime minister, but he found the anodyne pictures he was supposed to draw unsympathetic. The public’s disinclination to purchase led to the abandonment of the series after only four plates were completed. The political aspects of the occasion, the arrest and trial of Irish conspirators, and the unfortunate evidence of their friends in the English opposition were more popular.50 The danger that the revolution in France would be imported into England was made to appear very real indeed when on 17 April 1797 the seamen and marines at Spithead refused to sail until their grievances about pay, victuals, and treatment of sick and wounded were met. “The spirit of mutiny,” wrote William James, “had taken deep root in the breasts of the seamen, and, from the apparent organization of the plan, seemed to be the result of far more reflection, than the wayward mind of a jack-tar is usually given credit for.”51 Admiral Gardner had a rope shaken over his head during the mutiny. Farington reported that “such was His mortification and despair that He told them they had better hang him at once. This struck them a little and they replied, ‘They did not mean to hurt his honour.’”52 Against this well-organized collective action the government was powerless, and parliament rushed through a bill on 10 May agreeing to the seamen’s demands. The King signed a pardon for all the sailors involved. The popular Lord Howe was called out of retirement to meet the seamen’s delegates and respond to their demands.53 A more violent sequel broke out at the Thames naval anchorage at the Nore buoy on 12 May and spread to the North Sea squadron at Yarmouth. Vice Admiral Adam Duncan kept control of his own flagship, the Venerable, and regained control of the Adamant when he intervened personally, holding at arm’s length overboard the only sailor who dared contest his authority. The rest of the ships sailed to join the mutineers at the Nore, who were stopping merchant shipping entering

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or leaving the Thames in the hope of forcing the government’s hand. Even the seamen at Spithead expressed their concern about the events at the Nore. Eventually, the supply of victuals to the fleet was cut off, the forts at Tilbury, Gravesend, and Sheerness were prepared to fire red hot shot, and the buoyage in the Thames estuary was removed to deter attempts to take the ships to join the Dutch fleet at the Texel. Gradually the ships’ companies turned against their leaders, fights broke out, and finally one by one the ships sailed away to surrender. Richard Parker, who apparently had served as an acting lieutenant in the American war but had volunteered to serve as a seaman to escape imprisonment for debt, allowed himself to be pushed to the front of the mob. According to the gossip Farington heard, Parker was the son of a baker in Exeter and had been imprisoned in Edinburgh for debt, but had obtained his release by accepting the King’s bounty to join the navy. He also heard that when the First Lord, Earl Spencer, “used the word mutiny” to Parker, the latter replied, “Revolution.”54 At a time when there was considerable sympathy among the poor for the ideals of the French Revolution, and none whatsoever among the elite, that was the word above all which Parker should have avoided. The reality is that Parker, whose wife testified to his mental disorder, had only joined the fleet at Nore twelve days before the mutiny. He and twenty-eight delegates were condemned to hang, but he cheated justice. Before the order was given to swing him up, he thrust his hands into his pockets and leapt from the gunwale to hang himself. Others were flogged round the fleet.55

 Parker was a popular subject for the printsellers. One of the more striking is Parker the Delegate, Sketch’d by a Naval Officer. This highly coloured primitive gives rather a favourable impression of the man, but beyond his self-confident stance, gives little away.56 An interesting profile portrait print was drawn and engraved by the Irish engraver James Neagle, whom Raimbach considered to have had “most promising abilities, which seemed unfortunately to decline gradually as he grew older.” Neagle emigrated to the United States later in his life and died there in 1822.57 Samuel Drummond painted a portrait of Richard Parker which shows a strong man one-third turned, with the appearance of being an intelligent seaman. The picture was to be shown at the 1867 National

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Portrait Exhibition, and fortunately was photographed at the time, for it was in poor physical condition then and has since disappeared.58 Drummond, another virtually self-taught seaman artist, took an unusual interest in the common sailor. His father had distinguished himself by fighting for Bonnie Prince Charley in the 1745 rebellion and had been obliged as a result to live for a while in exile. Samuel was born in 1765 in London and at the age of fourteen had run away to sea. Reputedly he fought in three battles during the American Revolutionary War, and The Times reported that he was in the navy for seven years.59 In 1771 or 1772 he left the merchant service and determined to devote his life to art. Despite his lack of connections he managed to get work, and in 1790 exhibited at the Society of Artists. From 1791 until his death in 1844 he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, being elected an associate in 1808, and years later being made the curator of its pictures. In 1793 Drummond exhibited a marine at the Royal Academy. He later exhibited a number of portraits of naval officers, including one in 1795 of Captain Sir Sidney Smith, and in 1803 he began a series of dramatic marine subjects with Shipwrecked Sailors Relating Their Misfortunes, continuing in 1804 with The Drowned Sailor, and Shipwrecked Sailor Rescued from a Watery Grave.60 Preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a series of his drawings for the ornamentation of ships’ sterns.61 Drummond’s portrait of Parker and his series of shipwrecked sailors were subjects consistent with his family’s history of disaffection from the Hanoverian regime.

 Considering the traumatic events at Spithead and the Nore, it is remarkable that 1797 was to end in triumph for the Royal Navy. Vice Admiral Duncan had continued the blockade of the Texel keeping his flagship and Adamant anchored in the mouth of the harbour when eastern winds might have enabled the Dutch to sail. False signals were made to suggest that the main force was just across the horizon. Soon he was reinforced by six ships from the Channel fleet under Sir Roger Curtis, and an allied Russian squadron put in an appearance. The Dutch fleet might well have punched its way through this thin screen, but the chastened mutineers returned to their duty before the Dutch actually sailed. Thomas Holcroft passed close to these operations in a merchant ship, Kennet, in a convoy bound for Germany:

Samuel Drummond, Richard Parker, 36⬙ ⫻ 28⬙. The picture was photographed at the time of the 1867 National Portrait Exhibition, and has since disappeared. npg archive. No. 723 in exhibition catalogue.

George Harlow White, Samuel Drummond, pen and ink, 5¾⬙ ⫻ 4¾⬙ npg 4216.

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The Kennet was a good sailor; but if we ran before our guardian, we were liable to have a ten-pounder sent, with a possibility of hitting us, as a warning order to keep astern. If we were too close, the peril was that of running foul of the ships under the Commodore’s lee. If the weather fell hazy, this danger increased. If it was a calm, we must no less carefully keep our distance … On the sixth, we were off the Texel; on the seventh saw Lord Duncan’s fleet; and on the eighth were still upon the Dutch coast. I repeat what the mariners and their charts told me; for I could not see the land. The sailing under the protection of cannon balls, the look-out that was kept for the approach of an enemy, and the hostile fleets of Britain proudly riding on a threatened shore, inspire thoughts which – I will take another time to tell you what these thoughts were.62

The French abandoned the invasion plan when General Hoche died, but Admiral de Winter was nonetheless ordered to seek action at sea. The opportunity occurred in October when Duncan was in Yarmouth. The battle that followed on 11 October 1797, known as the battle of Camperdown from the name given the shoal ground where it was fought, was exceptionally hard. The Dutch, however, were at a disadvantage because their ships were small and because the armament of the British ships included carronades, which increased the weight of shot that could be fired. Duncan approached the Dutch line obliquely in two divisions, keeping his ships carefully dressed so that they did not obscure each other’s fire, and then executed the tactic Howe had ordered on the Glorious First of June. Each British ship passed through the Dutch line astern of the ship it was opposite, and formed line to leeward between the enemy and its own coastline. It was a masterly action for sailors who had lately been mutineers, and the results were exceptional. Nine of the fifteen Dutch ships of the line, and two frigates, were captured along with Admiral de Winter himself. The mob toured the streets of London ensuring that every householder illuminated his windows, although they quickly agreed not to trouble the house where Nelson was recovering from the amputation of his arm. On the 30th Farington heard signal guns from Greenwich Park, where the king was boarding a yacht to visit Duncan at the Nore. But Admiral Gardner told Farington that he thought a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s “an ill judged measure. – The King may be hooted. – He says after all the Naval Victories have produced nothing decisive for us to accelerate peace.” In December Farington was to record the grum-

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bling of captains O’Brien and Drury, who had commanded ships in Duncan’s van division, that “only Six Ships under Lord Duncan did their duty. – Had the other Ships done so not a Dutch ship would have escaped.” They added that Sir Richard Onslow, who had commanded the van, “was much hurt at not being noticed by the King at St. Paul’s.” Indicative of political turmoil in England, Smirke complained that the victory would only prolong the war, but the miniaturist John Downman, whom Farington characterized as “no Democrat,” rejoiced.63

 De Loutherbourg painted a stunning picture of Admiral Duncan’s Victory at Camperdown, which was exhibited in 1800 with another he painted of The Battle of the Nile of 1798. Both are very exciting representations of dramatic events. Camperdown showed again de Loutherbourg’s careful sketch work of marine detail, although the sketch books themselves are not preserved. The picture is beautifully expressive of the drama of the ships in action in a rolling seaway. In the centre is Duncan’s flagship, the Venerable, seen from the port quarter, and the masts of the ship she is fighting, the Vryheid, have just gone by the board. Portraits of ordinary seamen are again shown in the foreground, clinging to wreckage in a sea turned somewhat improbably into a boiling mass of foam. Along Venerable’s disengaged side a cutter is racing to their rescue. In the background Dutch ships can be seen disengaging. Camperdown was painted on a smaller canvas than de Loutherbourg had used for the Glorious First of June, but at 59⬙ by 84.5⬙ it is still large. It was to be widely seen by the public after an engraving of it was made by James Fittler, who published it himself and also published an index to the ships in the picture. De Loutherbourg also painted at least two smaller versions of the picture, so as to realize more from his investment of time and skill.64 Apparently he also made a picture of The cock-pit of the Venerable, Duncan’s flagship in the battle. The original has not been traced, but an engraving was made from it by J. Rogers.65 Farington noted in his diary in October 1798 that de Loutherbourg, who was now in his sixties, was “irregular in his application. Sometimes enthusiastic – at other times so indifferent as to seem to have little pleasure in practising his art.”66 But he had triumphed over his emotional exhaustion. He managed to avoid insulting any of the sailors, and his painting was well received.

De Loutherbourg, Admiral Duncan’s Victory at Camperdown, 59⬙ © Tate, London, 2004, t01451.

⫻

84⬙,

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Detail from James Fittler’s The Victory obtained over the Dutch Fleet by the British Squadron … under Admiral Duncan in the Action of the 11th October 1797, engraving after de Loutherbourg’s, published by Fittler April 1801, 605 ⫻ 885mm, bm 1917.12.3.2249

 This time it was not Mather Brown but Copley who competed with de Loutherbourg. Williams/Pasquin, when he found that he could not contain his criticism of Copley in his Memoirs of the Royal Academicians, wrote of him, and his teacher West, contemptuously: Mr. Copley appears contented to pass through life (to use nautical language) in the wake of his countryman Mr. West; he has the same hardness of execution, the same veneration for buttons and button-holes, and that accuracy of ornament so dear to the fastidious genius of Bedfordbury; and the same apprehensions of having any reliance upon the vigour of his intellects. In a limited sense such caution would be commendable; but it should not form the primary excellence of any who proudly assume the appellation of an Histor-

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ical Painter – to whose character we must annex a portion of the sublime, ‘ere we can consent to set an high value upon the fruits of his pencil.67

He was especially critical of the very thing that modern viewers most appreciate in Copley’s work: his careful portraiture. In order to paint his monumental The Spanish Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, Copley had even travelled to Hanover to paint portraits of General Elliot’s German staff officers, paying his expenses with £200 advanced by Alderman Boydell. 68 “That artist who cannot paint well in the absence of a model,” Pasquin pontificated, “has widely mistaken the inclinations of his ability, and makes what he wishes to be, a satire upon what he really is.” Born in Boston 3 July 1738 soon after his Irish parents arrived from the old country, John Singleton Copley was only ten years old when his father died. His mother’s second marriage had been to a mezzotint engraver, Peter Pelham, who himself died three years later. Pelham had lived just long enough that Copley was introduced into the world of the arts, and had seen enough of a print shop to enable him to turn his hand to that work to help support his family. He prospered as a portrait painter, to the extent that in July 1773 a fellow Bostonian, Joseph Palmer, noted that he had “made a large Fortune in a few years.” Copley decided to use his savings to advance himself in his profession by going to Europe to study history painting. His inclination to leave was given a powerful spur in November when he found himself called upon to act, unsuccessfully, as a mediator between the “Sons of Liberty” and his brother-in-law Richard Clarke, who was a major consignee of the East India Company’s tea. The tea was thrown into Boston Harbour, and on 10 June 1774 Copley sailed for Europe. Nearly a year later, the Revolution having by then broken out, Copley’s wife, Sukey, and his three eldest children sailed to join him in London. His youngest child had had to be left behind because he was too frail for the journey, and in fact died soon after his mother’s departure. In London Copley had been befriended by Benjamin West, with whom he had long been in correspondence. But Pasquin’s sneer that Copley was simply West’s follower was clearly inadequate, and was contradicted by his own castigation of Copley’s use of portraiture. In February 1779 he had been elected a member of the Royal Academy on the basis of an unusual history painting, Watson and the Shark, which used a group composition that was also a masterly work of portraiture to depict an

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incident in Havana Harbour.69 This was followed in 1779–81 with The Death of the Earl of Chatham, which established new standards for history painting by giving all the persona portrait likenesses, and by his masterpiece of 1782, The Death of Major Peirson. Pasquin was especially scathing about the other precedent Copley had set when he hired a room at Spring Gardens to exhibit his Death of Chatham. In six weeks twenty thousand people paid a shilling to see the picture. So many people were diverted from the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition that its gate was reduced by £1,000. Inevitably this made enemies for Copley, but that had not kept him from exhibiting The Spanish Floating Batteries at Gibraltar when commissioned to paint it by the City of London Common Council in 1783.70 Pasquin snorted: “To talk of any man possessing genius, who is so immoderately fond of money, is preposterous: the warm beams of genius thaw the icy altars of avarice; and to have genius, and be ungenerous, is impossible.” Sour grapes make the tongue sharp! Copley had needed to earn a living. Why Copley should have decided in 1797 to undertake another history painting is not known. Perhaps he felt challenged by Mather Brown’s success with Lord Howe’s Victory. At any rate, shortly after Duncan’s return Copley painted a life sketch of him, from that he worked up a three-quarter-length portrait which he exhibited at the Academy. This particularly fine painting is now in the care of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.71 So quickly was the work completed that Richard Earlom was able to make an engraving of it and get it on the market by the first of March 1798.72 By then Copley had already decided, as Alderman Boydell told Farington on 22 January, that he would undertake a major history painting of the victory.73 The Victory of Lord Duncan (Surrender of the Dutch Admiral De Winter to Admiral Duncan, October 11, 1797) is a rather too carefully posed group portrait.74 The description made by an anonymous reviewer in the Morning Chronicle 24 May 1799 edition can hardly be bettered: Mr. Copley’s picture of Lord Duncan’s Victory is at length presented to the public eye, and we turn with pleasure from the Transparencies and dazzling deceptions of the day to the contemplation of an interesting and classical work … The present work is a successful attempt to treat a naval victory in a new and agreeable manner. – The scene is on board the Admiral’s ship, and the event of the day is pointedly told by the introduction of a British sailor, who is bearing along in triumph the Dutch flag, while De Winter is surrendering

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Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, oil on canvas, oval, 1783–1784, npg 2143.

his sword to the gallant conqueror. The countenance of the Dutch Admiral is manly and dignified; that of Lord Duncan is happily expressive of the feelings of sympathy and benevolence … Those who are inclined to indulge in the severity of criticism may perhaps with reason object that the scene upon the water is too contracted, and an Aristarchus might ridicule the general neatness in the appearance of sailors who are supposed to have just desisted from a furious engagement.

Copley had painted portraits of all the persona, who came to his studio in George Street for a sitting. Copley’s son, John Singleton, recalled that one of the sitters, the Boatswain John Cresey, “wore a large pigtail and insisted on being painted in such a position as to display it.”75 Another of Venerable’s people, placed standing second aft of Admiral Duncan, was a Lieutenant John Little, who had been born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the son of American Loyalist Samuel Little.

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John Singleton Copley, The Victory of Lord Duncan (Surrender of the Dutch Admiral De Winter to Admiral Duncan, October 11, 1797), ngs.

Little’s presence on board during the battle was a stroke of luck, because Copley undoubtedly knew his father. Little asked Benjamin Turner, who had been rated as a landsman on board the Venerable at the time of the action, to make one or more drawings of her quarterdeck. He was a Londoner and had joined when twenty-two years old, so he may have had some sort of apprenticeship in the arts. Venerable had had to be taken into the dockyard at Chatham for a thorough refit, and Turner had been transferred to the Kent along with most of Venerable’s people, and rated an Ordinary Seaman.76 But it is possible that he did the drawing from life, as Kent was lying at Sheerness not far down the Medway from the Venerable at Chatham.

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What influence Little and Turner may have had on the composition cannot be established. Perhaps not much, because Little did not send Turner’s sketch to Copley until 6 March 1799. That was only two months before The Victory of Lord Duncan was put on exhibition, so Copley could not have used it as the basis of his design. Little’s note called Copley’s attention to the sauve-tête netting stretched to prevent heavy blocks, which might be cut from the rigging, from falling on the men on deck, and to the “hammocoes” in their nets around the quarterdeck and poop, which served to protect the men on deck from small-arms fire. But those details did not appear in Copley’s picture.77 Copley placed in the rigging a sailor by the name of John Crawford, one of the Venerable’s able seaman, aged twenty-one years. He had particularly distinguished himself by going aloft during the battle to nail the fallen colours to the mast, using his pistol butt as a hammer. Inevitably, he was targeted by enemy marksmen, and was wounded by a splinter that was driven through his cheek. Supposedly he dismissed his injury with a casual, “Never mind, that’s naught.” Farington was sent two tickets when Copley put Admiral Duncan’s Victory on exhibit, and he went to have a look, taking his wife Susan.78 The Times praised the “chaste simplicity of design and colouring” in Copley’s work, and suggested that it would “strongly recommend it to those who have formed their taste from purer models than the works of the English school.” It particularly commented that “De Winter’s appearance is peculiarly characteristical.” “The groups,” it added, “are judiciously varied and disposed, they convey the idea of business without confusion, and the unity of the design is well preserved.” However, it was concerned at “a too great boldness in the perspective, which, though authorized by great examples, is certainly not a pleasing choice.”79 Now what did it mean by that? Perhaps Copley’s choice of perspective explains why, in commercial terms, the painting was to be a disappointment. He was still quarrelling with the Corporation of London about his fee for the Gibraltar. James Heath, the engraver, later told Farington that the sale of prints of the picture was so poor that Copley had raised only £600, “two thirds of which” was to be paid to William Sharp for making the plate. Nevertheless, Copley decided to accept as a final settlement £300 guineas, of which £200 was to repay Boydell his advance, and to ask Boydell to sound the Council about whether it would like to purchase Duncan’s Victory. He had reason to hope because, a week after the battle of the

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Nile, Admiral Nelson had written to the Corporation to present them with the sword of Admiral Blanquet. On its receipt on 10 October 1798 a council of all the Aldermen drew up a “Humble and Dutiful Address” to the king, and set up a committee to memorialize the recent naval victories. On 7 February 1799 Copley wrote to the Common Council offering to sell them Duncan’s Victory and saying that he was also embarking on a picture of Nelson’s triumph.80 But he was to be disappointed. The councillors did come to see Copley’s work, and it was exhibited in the Court of Common Council, but they decided not to make a purchase.81 Copley accordingly exhibited it himself. The noble neighbours around Green Park objected to his pitching his tent there. Gibraltar had only been shown in the park because the king had invited Copley to pitch near the Queen’s quarters in Buckingham House. This time no royal invitation was forthcoming, but Copley obtained permission from Lord Suffield to pitch his tent at his house on Albemarle Street. The public were not buying. A writer in the British Magazine wrote that Copley had been disappointed: Popular and national as the subject of this picture was, its spirit had evaporated and sunk into torpid neglect before the exhibition of it was opened to the town; and the remuneration of that labour remains yet to be made to the artist, for a memorial of one of the most brilliant conquests acquired by the navy of England. The fortune attending the production of public pictures … of subjects the most interesting and important to the national glory, has at length opened the eyes of the artists, who have speculated on public patronage, to the infatuation that had cheated them of their time and their money, and left them a prey to chagrin and disappointment

But it was not only Copley who was hurting. The Grand Attack on Valenciennes, filled with portraits of the first military character of the age and country – Earl Howe’s Victory, the first splendid burst of the naval glory of the empire, purchased by a country auctioneer, at little more expence than the original cost of the frame – and lastly, Lord Duncan’s Victory, on the same magnificent scale; all, all works of nought, and doomed to oblivion!82

The tax which Raimbach remembered Pitt remitting for academicians and associates was a rate on houses. West, Farington, and John Hoppner the portrait painter had lobbied Pitt in December 1797 on be-

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half of the less well-to-do artists, and received a sympathetic hearing. At the end of the year he had introduced into parliament amendments to the “Assessed Taxes Bill,” which placed the homes of members and associates of the Royal Academy on the same tax rate as was applied to houses licensed for the reception of lunatics.83 William Carey, in his defence of the British Institution, noted that “in 1801, there were more than four hundred exhibiting artists, in London, without an adequate increase of patronage, although a feeling for the arts had made considerable advances in the capital.”84 No doubt Copley’s chagrin was reduced when, early in 1802, Lady Mary Duncan purchased Duncan’s Victory for £1,000 guineas and presented it to her nephew with instructions that it should never be sold.85 It hung until recently in the Duncan house, which is owned by the City of Dundee, but Copley’s work has been acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland and its future location is uncertain. Most artists never saw that sort of money for a single painting, but Copley had had major expenses painting and exhibiting the picture. He had entered into a contract with the engraver Anker Smith, whom Raimbach considered overrated, but Smith failed to carry out the work. Copley could only live up to his commitment to offer a print to the public by hiring James Ward to make a mezzotint. He had to pay him £250 to make the plate and keep it in good repair until 400 good copies had been pulled. The reviewer in the British Magazine thought the print lacked something: “Mr Ward has exerted himself with great success, in giving a very accurate representation of the picture in his engraving, in which no pains have been spared in making out all its points with the greatest minuteness, and more spirit than could well be expected from its numerous small parts; it has, however, a hardness of line, that a too close attention to the style of the painter has most probably led him into, and for which the engraver may not be to blame.” How the profits and losses totalled is not known, but Copley was to die in poverty, supported almost entirely, according to Raimbach, by the earnings of his son. James Heath told Farington in 1811 that Copley had been forced to mortgage his house, and put it up for sale.86

 De Loutherbourg and Copley were the most important artists to finish pictures of Camperdown, with Drummond adding his own effort years later. For some reason Pocock did not exhibit a picture of Camperdown

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at the Academy, although he did a grey wash drawing, and for some reason did complete two versions of a watercolour Flag table of the English Fleet at Camperdown.87 Pocock’s apparent decision not to undertake a major painting will have been welcomed by the lesser artists who were happy to supply the demand for paintings and prints. Among these the work of Thomas Whitcombe has to be taken seriously. Little is known about his career, apart from his prolific output of naval paintings, of which he exhibited fifty-six at the Royal Academy between 1783 and 1824. He lived from 1752 to 1827, apparently mostly in London, and he may have had professional experience at sea. It is presumed that he must have been a sailor to have devoted his life to marine painting, but the quality of his workmanship definitely puts him into the ranks of the professional painters. His oil painting of Camperdown in the National Maritime Museum, signed and dated 1798, is a fairly classical depiction of the engagement, using a quarterdeck perspective, and a carefully painted sky.88 Twenty years after the battle Whitcombe revisited the subject, painting a picture that was realized as a mezzotint by Thomas Sutherland. This latter Action off Camperdown has something of de Loutherbourg about it, and more of the Van de Veldes, with a somewhat improbably tormented sea.89 Another who rushed to supply the appetite of the public was Brown’s business partner, Daniel Orme, who published in 1800 a view of De Winter’s surrender, which he had drawn himself “on board the Venerable.”90 Like Brown, he interpreted his job as including portraiture. He had painted a miniature of Admiral De Winter while he was in England, which De Winter presented to Duncan before his release on parole.91 Daniel Orme had also taken a likeness of Admiral Duncan, which he and his brother Edward published on 1 March 1798 as an engraving by Charles Turner, who was a protegé of the Duke of Marlborough and had worked for Boydell before setting up on his own. Later he was to work with J.M.W. Turner, but they were not kinsmen. Alfred Whitman, who catalogued Charles Turner’s work, described him as one of “the world’s patient plodders … who without fuss and noise pursue a course of steady industry.”92 One of the Orme brothers, possibly Edward, painted Crawford’s portrait. Apart from its use in the engraving, it was also published separately, and the title reveals that he was using it as advertising: John Crawford of Sunderland Durham: The Sailor who Nailed the Flag to the Main Top Gallant mast head, on board the Venerable, Lord Duncan’s Ship, after being once Shot away by the Dutch Admiral de Winter. Drawn by Mr.

J. Wells, Dutch Prizes (taken on the spot) with the Flag Ships of the Admirals Viscount Duncan and Sir Richard Onslow, Bart. as stationed in the River Medway previous to the intended Royal Review, aquatint and etching, published by Wells and W. Twiss, 19 Dec 1797, 660 ⫻ 505mm, bm 1917.12.8.4650.

Orme on board for the Express purpose of Introducing into his Picture of Ld Duncan’s Victory now Engraving by Subscription & which includes Portraits of the Admirals & Officers who so Gloriously Distinguished themselves on the ever Memorable 11th of October 1797. Proposals may be had & Subscriptions Received by Mr. Orme.93 And yet another Orme, William, did the art work from which H. Lemon executed yet another engraving of the battle.94 It is impossible to mention all the prints that were engraved purporting to portray the battle of Camperdown, but one quite successful effort was a print of Dutch Prizes (taken on the spot) with the Flag Ships of the Admirals Viscount Duncan and Sir Richard Onslow, Bart. as stationed in the River Medway previous to the intended Royal Review. This was the work of a professional engraver, J. Wells, who worked in this instance from his own drawing.95 It was a definite improvement on the practice of hiring a naval officer with little artistic skill, but of course the subject was one that it was practicable for a landsman to undertake on his own, perhaps with the help of a local boatman. No doubt the cancellation of the royal visit due to heavy weather had serious implications for sales. The indefatigable Robert Dodd also engraved a picture

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based on his own drawing.96 Cruikshank had made several satirical prints of the mutiny at the Nore, and he made another on The Dutch in an Uproar or the Batavian Republic crying for Winter! 97 A much more serious graphic was another of Robert Smirke’s large commemorative prints, with an allegorical header. In this work he incorporated medallion portraits by the Norwich-born miniaturist, John Smart, who had recently returned to England after working for ten years in India. 98

Robert Smirke, Commemorative poster of the Battle of Camperdown, aquatint engraving by J. Hellyer, published by John Brydon, 27 October 1799, 480 ⫻ 705mm, © nmm pah 7907.

Four F r o m t h e N i l e an d C op e n hag e n to the Eve of Trafalgar

The battles of Cape St Vincent and Camperdown had deflected the immediate threat of invasion, but for more than a decade British naval strategy had to continue to deal with the prospect that the French could create new resources – and order new naval movements – which could make possible the passage of a French army across the English Channel. In the spring of 1798, only a few months after the victory over the Dutch fleet, it was discovered that the French were preparing ships and men in all the ports they controlled in the Mediterranean. General Buonaparte, who had carried revolution and conquest deep into Italy and then been placed in command of the “Army of England,” was ordered to Toulon. It was apparent that a major expedition was being planned, and there was too much reason to fear that the intent was to bring French naval forces from the Mediterranean to support an invasion. The Royal Navy had no base east of Gibraltar, but a detachment was made from the Mediterranean fleet off Cadiz. It says a great deal for Nelson, now a Rear Admiral, that he was entrusted with this responsibility. But as so often happened in eighteenth-century naval warfare, it proved to be impossible to prevent the sailing of the enemy, or even to mark its progress. His frustrating chase of the French expeditionary force from end to end of the Mediterranean was an obvious subject for the cartoonists, because of the fear that Buonaparte was headed into the Atlantic and bound for Ireland or England. On 13 August 1798 there appeared an unsigned satirical cartoon, possibly by Charles Williams, captioned Anticipation – Ways and Means – Or Buonaparte really taken!! In it William Pitt, the prime minister, was depicted as a barker at a fair urging a suspicious John Bull: “He is perfectly tame I assure you.”1

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Perhaps not actually tame, but it was certainly the case that after Camperdown there was no prospect of the Army of England seeing action, whatever the fears in England. Buonaparte’s objective was not, in fact, the immediate invasion of England. Rather, the French plan was the conquest of Egypt, to open the way to defeating British interests in India. Buonaparte sailed from Toulon on May 11. Beginning by seizing Malta from the Knights of St John, he arrived in Alexandria on the first of July, and defeated the Mamluke army in the Battle of the Pyramids on 21 July. At that point he began to come unstuck. After zig-zagging the length of the eastern Mediterranean three times, Nelson finally found the French battle fleet moored in Aboukir Bay east of Alexandria on the first of August. During the chase he had met with his officers daily and gone over all the possible circumstances in which they might have to fight the French, and the tactics they would use. No time was now wasted, even to dress the squadron in line of battle. Without waiting a minute the British ships sailed boldly into the bay and attacked the French in the dusk. Moving along their line in the dark, Nelson’s ships’ companies won the most absolute victory of the age of sail, capturing or destroying all but two of the enemy lineof-battle ships. The news of the Battle of the Nile reached England on October second and was greeted with wild rejoicing. The cartoonists had a heyday and represented the Opposition as utterly despondent, and Buonaparte as a bombast.2 Farington, who had been following every rumour, noted in his diary the gossip that when Nelson’s dispatches “were delivered to the King at Weymouth, the purport was signified, and his Majesty on opening them & reading the words at the beginning ‘Almighty God &c’ stopt & for a minute with his eyes turned to heaven, appeared to be offering his thanks for such mercies.”3 Nelson’s presentation of Admiral Blanquet’s sword to the City of London, which was certainly intended to stoke public interest, was redundant. Holcroft was amused by the “whimsical disputes of half drunken passengers in the coach” on his way home from a musical evening at Franz Joseph Haydn’s, where his wife Fanny had performed: “each man, according to his own account, minutely acquainted with all occurrences.” He had earlier noted while walking through “the mean streets leading to the Seven Dials,” however, that on the second night of rejoicing “the poor did not illuminate.”4 Haydon later recorded his own meeting with Nelson: “I remember, that after the Battle of the Nile, when quite a child, I was walking with

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a schoolfellow, near Stonehouse, when a little diminutive man, with a green shade over his eye, a shabby well-worn cocked hat, and buttonedup undress coat, approached us. He was leaning on the arm of a taller man in a black coat and round hat (I should think this must have been poor Scott [his secretary who was killed at Trafalgar], as he came up, my companion said, “There’s Nelson!” “Let us take off our hats,” said I. We did so, and held them out so far that he could not avoid seeing us, and as he passed he touched his own hat, and smiled. We boasted of this for months.”5

 None of the artists of naval victory could easily resist such a topical subject. There was reason to hope the art market would respond, and especially to pictures of the battle. Apart from its military and psychological importance, the Nile was an interesting subject for the artists because of its having been fought largely in the night. Many of them, including de Loutherbourg, made their subject the fire and explosion that destroyed the French flagship, L’Orient. But the battle had been fought far from the ports of England, and the British fleet did not sail home in triumph. None of the major artists of naval victory were on hand to sketch from life. The only art works by a witness to the action were two prints of the battle made “from drawing taken on the spot by Captain James Weir of Marines, hms Audacious.”6 Unfortunately, Captain Weir’s capacity as an artist was very limited. Ralph Willet Miller had taken part in the action, in command of Theseus, but no sketch of his appears to have survived. He employed his artistic abilities for tactical deception prior to the battle by painting a row of gunports onto the ship’s hammock cloths to give it the appearance of a three-decker. Buttersworth painted several pictures of the Battle of the Nile, but as his ship, Caroline, was watching the port of Genoa on the first of August 1798, far from the scene of the battle, these are not likely to be based on first-hand observation.7 His painting in the National Maritime Museum, a watercolour, is not especially successful. The fleets are represented as positive miracles of station keeping, and the sea is painted to look like the ripple pattern in a saucepan. Nevertheless, it does have a great deal of charm.8 Two other oil paintings of his of the battle of the Nile are recorded in the file at the Whitt library as being in private hands.9

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Of more interest are pictures Buttersworth painted of the Mediterranean fleet in the two years between the battle and his medical discharge at Minorca. The Caroline spent most of 1798 and 1799 cruising off the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Spain and Portugal, ranging as far as Minorca, and Funchal in Madeira.10 A watercolour of his in the Peabody Essex Museum shows hms Flora and Caroline reconnoitring Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands.11 An original and especially attractive Buttersworth watercolour has been tentatively identified as depicting the inshore squadron manoeuvring under Vice Admiral Lord Keith off Cadiz in 1799. The drama has been heightened by the chosen perspective, which suggests that the two ships in the foreground may be about to collide.12 In private hands is A View of Faro and the Tower of Messina with the Queen Charlotte, 110 Guns, Vice Admiral Lord Keith, with a schooner and a pilot boat.13 Presumably this dates from the pursuit of Admiral Bruix and the French fleet from Brest in the spring of 1799. At Minorca, ill health had obliged the Earl of St Vincent to hand over command to Lord Keith, who pursued Bruix all the way back to Brest. Another attractive Buttersworth is named from the background material, The Russian Line of Battle Ships with the French and Spanish fleets passing the Straits after having been up the Mediterranean. In the foreground is the Argo wearing the St Vincent’s flag. The earl had come on board at Gibraltar 31 July 1799 for the passage to Spithead, where she arrived 16 August.14 Pocock undertook his best-known version of the Battle of the Nile nearly ten years after the event. It is an oil painting with a bird’s eye perspective, a sea bird’s eye, showing the fleets in perfect formation. The picture is now in the care of the National Maritime Museum, which also has several of Pocock’s preliminary graphite sketches. These are considerably more interesting.15 More successful is Pocock’s Taking of the Guillaume Tell, 31 March 1800, for which he employed a quarterdeck perspective. The Guillaume Tell was one of the two French ships of the line to escape after the battle of the Nile. The picture’s composition was challenging. It progresses from right to left with Guillaume Tell dismasted left of centre. The National Maritime Museum possesses the graphite sketch from which Pocock worked as well as the finished print.16 One of Pocock’s less satisfactory pictures is of Nelson’s flagship Vanguard dismasted by a gale while watching Toulon in the months before

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Thomas Buttersworth, The Russian Line of Battle Ships with the French and Spanish fleets passing the Straits after having been up the Mediterranean, watercolour, signed, 1799, 403 ⫻ 619mm, © nmm pah 9510.

the chase to Alexandria. She was taken under tow by the Alexander, commanded by Sir Alexander Ball, in a desperate effort to clear a lee shore. Not only was Nelson’s ship in Pocock’s picture wrongly identified as the Agamemnon but the ships are shown standing up to a strong wind. The really dangerous time for Vanguard was after the wind had failed almost entirely and she was being driven by the swell onto the rocks.17 Robert Cleveley’s contribution to the graphic representation of the Battle of the Nile was the design of a medal commissioned by Alexander Davison, Nelson’s prize agent. On the obverse is a handsome representation of Britannia with a very poor portrait of Nelson on her shield. On the reverse is a nicely conceived picture of Nelson’s squadron sailing into battle.18 This sort of thing, however, was not likely to lead to the election to the Academy that Cleveley coveted. Paul Sandby discussed the slate of applicants for associate membership with Farington, and commented that Cleveley had no chance. Nor did he. Not a single vote was registered for him.19 The National Maritime Museum possesses no less than three pictures of the Battle of the Nile painted in oils by Thomas Whitcombe. These are not especially interesting pictures. His skill in ship painting was not always matched with a knowledge of fleet movements.20

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Nicholas Pocock, Taking of the Guillaume Tell 31 Mar 1800, 1802?. watercolour, 265 ⫻ 406mm, © nmm paf 5879.

Smirke undertook another of his large commemorative plates with fifteen medallion portraits of The Victory of the Nile, engraved by John Landseer. This material was used, along with a descriptive text, in 1802 when Robert Bowyer’s Historic Gallery published a “double elephant” sized volume, in “Commemoration of the Four Great Naval Victories” of the First of June, Cape St Vincent, Camperdown, and the Nile.21 It was also issued as a single sheet in 1803, printed on card. Smirke’s reputation had by now been established, and he was to be commissioned in 1799 by the Missionary Society to paint a commemorative picture of the Tahitian chief Pomare ceding land at Matavai to be used as a mission settlement. Smirke did his best to represent the Tahitians realistically, but he was prevailed upon to tone down the image of noble savages in his finished painting, in keeping with the missionary conviction that they were in need of Christian civilization.22

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A newcomer amongst this band of brother artists was Francis Chesham, who had engraved Pocock’s pictures of the Battle of the Glorious First of June. George Riley commissioned him to draw a series of four pictures of the Battle of the Nile. These were described as “finished from a drawing in the possession of” Captain Sir Thomas Boulden Thompson, who had commanded Leander in the battle.23 In the British Library is preserved a sketchbook believed to have belonged to William Anderson, which contains several studies for a painting of the battle of Camperdown and a series of plots of the battle of the Nile with notes on the damage sustained by individual ships. Several sketches have the name “Col. Fawkes” noted on them.24 Colonel Walter Fawkes was an important art collector, and was to be a major patron and friend to J.M.W. Turner a few years later. In 1798 he had only recently inherited his estate and was purchasing pictures in London. It is probable that Anderson was hoping to sell him the finished canvas. Anderson’s original paintings of the Battle of the Nile have not been located, but the National Maritime Museum possesses a series of four prints based on his work, realized as aquatints and published in 1800 by Alexander Riley.25 In 1798 Anderson exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture of The British Squadron going in to the Tagus with Spanish Captured Ships, and another of The Evening of February 14, 1797, off Cape St. Vincent, after the action, the British Frigates having the Spanish Prizes in Tow. There is no evidence to suggest that he had been a witness to these events. He continued to exhibit pictures at the Academy almost every year until 1814, and on another five occasions thereafter, but it was not until 1834 that he again exhibited there a naval picture, Lord Howe’s Fleet off Spithead.

 Robert Barker had already planned two naval shows for early 1799 in the panorama gallery. These were to be a view of Plymouth, and a view of the masterly retreat before a superior French force which had distinguished Vice Admiral William Cornwallis in early 1795.26 An Explanation of Admiral Cornwallis’s Engagement … (Belle Isle, 16–17 June 1795) had been printed as a guide to the panorama.27 The Battle of the Nile, however, was too good a subject to be missed. Additional premises were needed, and Barker made the most of them. His advertisement in the True Briton 13 June 1799 gives a lively description:

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blowing up the l’orient, with the Representation of the whole of the battle of the nile, aided by the united powers of Mechanics, Painting, and Optics, from its commencement on the Evening of Attack, until its glorious termination on the ensuing morning. The whole in motion, the respective Vessels taking their stations in the order in which the combat began, with the State of the Fleets on the ensuing Morning; part of the French Fleet effecting their Escape; the zealous Capt. Hood bearing down on them, and firing and receiving their Broadsides as she passes; the English boats rowing in different directions, taking possession of the vanquished ships, and saving the Frenchmen from the wrecks, is now exhibiting at the Naumachia, Silver Street, Fleet Street, every Evening.28

On 10 July 1799 the True Briton reported that “two elements are represented by Transparent Mediums, in motion, upon a scale of 30ft by 12 in. height.” This suggests that Barker had borrowed some of the methods that had been pioneered in de Loutherbourg’s Eidophusikon. According to the True Briton, the panorama was “designed and executed by, and under the direction of Mr. Turner.” The case for the panorama having been the work of J.M.W. Turner is that Henry Aston Barker was his friend, and that he had exhibited at the Academy in 1799 an easel picture of the Battle of the Nile which has since been lost.29 The association of J.M.W. Turner with the panorama is supported by the fact that in 1800 a depiction of the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius Vomiting forth Torrents of Fire, environed with spiral streams of Burning Lava, and in her utmost state of Convulsion, as seen from across the Bay of Naples was added to it, a subject he was to work with in 1817. However, the case against his being the panoramist is also great. It is possible that the artist was a George Turner, who in 1800 exhibited at the Academy The Blowing up of the L’Orient on August 1 1798, with the whole of the French and English Lines in their Stations, a picture which the British Magazine thought “was an indifferent performance.”30 Charles Dibdin the younger, the proprietor of Sadler’s Wells theatre, raises yet another possible candidate, referring to a “M. Turner, Jun., a Gentleman who had invented an extraordinary naumachial exhibition, illustrative of the Battle of the Nile.”31 But then, M. Turner, Junior, could be Mr Turner, Junior. J.M.W. Turner signed his name in his youth as William, which was also his father’s name. The reviewer of the Morning Chronicle was enthusiastic: “Nothing can be more perfect or more sublime than the illusion which this Paint-

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ing of the Battle of the Nile possesses. The effect is the most striking that we ever witnessed from the combination of light and colours. It is actually magical, for the Spectators are surrounded on all sides with the flames of the engagement, and they shrink from the explosions that threaten to cover them with the burning fragments of the ship blown up. It is the chef d’oeuvre of this work, and greatly exceeds all the former representations that Mr. Barker has given us in this new art.”32 In the summer of 1799, when Henry Aston Barker took passage to the Mediterranean to make drawings for panoramas of Port Mahon and Constantinople, he was to meet Nelson. On 6 December his ship reached Palermo and the next morning he went ashore to pay his respects to Sir William Hamilton. He noted in the journal he kept that he “called in the morn[ing of the] 7th [of December] and saw Lady H[amilton] who I found beautiful but rather too fat to be elegant. If I was pleased with her appearance how much more so by her affability!” When he returned in the evening he was introduced to Sir William, and to Lord Nelson. “Gambling went on to a great extent in which Lady H and Lord N[elson] were principal actors. I pittied Lord N. He seem’d quite tired of the noise and bustle which was very great. The Hero of the Nile sitting by L[ady] H was every moment dropping asleep and reminded me not a little of Hercules and Amphala.” Sir William begged Henry Aston to dine with him the evening of the ninth, and Nelson assured him that his ship would not sail. When Henry Aston arrived, he “found L.H. sitting at a small wheel spinning and an Italian Princess busy with a spindle and distaff – Ld N then came into the room with whom I had a little conversation – we soon went to dinner – Ld N on LH’s right and she cut his meat … He was very lively. He amused himself after dinner teach[ing] the Princess to say ‘damn y[our] Eyes’ for an English blessing.” Henry Aston also met Nelson’s secretary William Tyson, who had come to know his father when “he was onboard the Hannibal in the Fleet at Spithead.” This was most likely at the time that the sketchwork was being done for Barker’s first naval panorama, because Hannibal was not part of Lord Howe’s fleet at the Glorious First of June.33 In a later memoir which he provided the obituary writer of the Art Journal, he said: “I cannot forget [Lady Hamilton’s] appearance in the evening – her fine commanding form, dressed in a kind of robe, trimmed with roses from her neck to her feet – her beautiful countenance, with lovely dark eyes. I was introduced by Sir William Hamilton to Lord Nelson

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who took me by the hand, saying he was indebted to me for keeping up the fame of his victory in the battle of the Nile for a year longer than it would have lasted in the public estimation.”34 It is likely that Henry Aston’s memory was at fault and that the hero’s thanks were offered two years later when he again met Nelson, in Copenhagen. Port Mahon had a long history of Royal Navy use as a fleet base, and had been captured by Commodore Duckworth and General Stuart in November 1797.35 The notes that Henry Aston made to accompany his drawings provided some idea of what the panorama must have looked like, and reveal something of his methods. “This town is entirely built with stone, mostly of a yellow Brown color; many of the Houses are whitewashed, which gives it a very clean appearance; those are marked in the Drawings by Blue. The Houses of every Description are Tiled, even the Churches are covered with them – Drawing No. 1 the first yellow House has a white horizontal band between the Windows and white up to its corners; the windows with Blinds always look green. The long Building mark’d 1 is the Convent of Carmelites.”36

 Copley’s intention had been to paint “Lord Nelson surrounded by his officers on the quarter Deck of the Vanguard the moment preceding the explosion of the French Admiral’s Ship.”37 Disappointed of his hope of selling Duncan’s Victory to the City of London, however, Copley did not pursue his plan. It was again to be de Loutherbourg whose work created a monument to the battle of the Nile. De Loutherbourg’s painting has been criticized as “overly dramatic,” but “highly dramatic” would certainly be better.38 The red glare in the sky from the explosion of l’Orient in the background just left of centre illuminates the lines of warships. They are virtually silhouetted, but there is enough reflected light to make it possible for him to pick out hulls, gunports, and rigging in careful detail. He again filled his foreground with seamen in boats and clinging to wreckage, but this time the sense is of Hades. The sound of the explosion was so catastrophic that the guns of the two fleets fell silent, and this menacing stillness is beautifully conveyed. The men in boats in this the last of de Loutherbourg’s great naval pictures suggest the voyage of the dead across the Styx. Facing each other across the “Images of War” gallery in Tate Britain at the time of writing this book, de Loutherbourg’s Nile and Admiral Dun-

De Loutherbourg, Battle of the Nile, 59⬙ ⫻ 84⬙, © Tate, London, 2004 t01452.

can’s Victory, so different in content and presentation, make a dramatic and overwhelming pair. De Loutherbourg painted at least one smaller version of his Nile, which is in private hands. An engraving of it was made by James Fittler, who published it himself in April 1801, and another engraving was made by J. Rogers.39 It is a little surprising that Mather Brown did not compete with de Loutherbourg, but circumstances were suggesting to him the necessity to change his business objectives. The Royal Academy’s rejection of his application for the third time in 1795 had depressed the prices he could command for portraits, in a market that was already depressed by the war. His cousin and childhood friend, Mather Byles III, visited London in November 1799 and reported home to the aunts in Boston that for the last three years Brown had not been able to support himself by painting. He was actively seeking employment in the East India Company, but without success.40 In desperation he tried to earn his living by drawing and etching pictures for copy books intended to be used by young

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ladies learning to draw. According to his biographer, Dorinda Evans, Mather had always shown a considerable interest in young ladies, but he was never to marry, perhaps because of his uncertain financial position. He was also worried about difficulty with his eyes which made him fear the prospect of blindness. He was persuaded to write his parents, which he had not done for seven years, but the letter he addressed to his father mysteriously disappeared. When his father died six months later there was no provision in the will for Mather, and he was to harbour resentment toward his sisters for the rest of his life. Perhaps he might have written more often! As a consequence of these desperate difficulties, Brown was not to undertake a picture of the battle of the Nile until 1825. Nelson’s battles retained a very high profile in Britain long after the end of the war, and in June 1824 the British Institution was to offer prizes of £200 and £100 for the best two sketches of the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. The stakes were raised the following June to £500 for finished pictures to be presented to the newly opened picture gallery at Greenwich Hospital.41 Henry Tijou, writing to Sir John Leicester, Lord de Tabley, said he believed it was the “failure on the part of Turner” in his 1823 royal commission for a painting of the Battle of Trafalgar which led the British Institution to offer the prize. Leicester’s patronage of British artists had set the model for the British Institution which he had helped to establish.42 The sketch Brown made for the Nile picture competition had the potential to be his best history picture, and a major development from his former style. Gone were the posed portraits used for Lord Duncan’s Victory, and instead there is a Dantesque vision of a wet hell illuminated by the exploding l’Orient. The focus is on the struggles of men clinging to wreckage, in a manner more impressionistic than de Loutherbourg’s. His sketch is now in the possession of the National Maritime Museum.43 Perhaps Brown’s treatment of the subject was too “modern” for the judges. He did not win the prize. He did paint a finished picture of the battle, which was also exhibited at the British Institution in 1825 and sold, but whether this was an entirely different picture is not known.44 The successful candidate for the British Institution “Nile” prize was to be George Arnald, who chose to paint the explosion of L’Orient for one of his very few naval pictures.45 He was primarily a landscape and genre painter who had worked with the landscape painter Sebastian Pether and mastered his style, before developing his ability to work from nature.46 In 1827 he exhibited in the British Institution the finished picture in the

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romantic style of The French flagship L’Orient blowing up at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. This is generally considered to be his best painting. The orange flash of the explosion powerfully illuminates the surrounding ships and men in small boats, throwing them into high relief.47 However, it is less descriptive of ships of the line in battle than is de Loutherbourg’s masterpiece. The second prize of £100 went to a Mr Wilson.48

 Following Nelson’s return to Palermo, the adulation of the Neapolitan court, of the elites throughout most of Europe, and of the public, temporarily unbalanced his mind. Considering that he had lost an arm in Tenerife in 1797 and suffered a major blow to the head at the Nile, his over-reaction is understandable. However, it cost him his marriage when Emma Hamilton became his mistress, and it cost him the confidence of the government in London. His participation in the reconquest of Naples,

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George Arnald, self-portrait, oil, 1831, npg 5254.

and the excesses which followed, was undertaken despite orders that should have sent his ships to join Admiral Keith in his pursuit of Bruix. One of the consequences of Nelson’s attention being diverted to the pleasures and problems of Naples was that Buonaparte was able to slip back across the Mediterranean to France. His attempt to fight his way back to Europe by way of the Levant had been thwarted by Djezzar Pacha’s defence of Acre, assisted by a small British squadron commanded by Commodore Sir Sidney Smith, and Buonaparte had resolved to abandon his defeated army in Egypt where they could tell no tales to French news-

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papers. Passing undetected through waters dominated by Nelson’s fleet, he was back in France in time to take a decisive part in the coup d’état of Brumaire, and was soon put in all but absolute command of the French state as “First Consul.” French preparations for invasion of England were then renewed. The subject of one Gillray print from November 1798 had been: Buonaparte, hearing of Nelson’s Victory, swears by his Sword, to extirpate the English from off the Earth.49 Intended ironically as a comment on his impotence in Egypt, and sarcastically because of his claim to be as good a Muslim as the best, it had also been prescient. The defeats suffered by the Spanish, Dutch, and French navies did not eliminate the threat of invasion because the French army had a fearful reputation and it appeared that the Danes were bowing to the prevailing wind. Tsar Paul of Russia was also pursuing an increasingly pro-French policy, and Sweden was no less worrying. Early in 1801 it was felt essential that action be taken to ensure that the Danish, Swedish, and Russian fleets should not fall into the hands of the French. Because of his dalliance at the Court of Naples and his disobedience to order, Nelson was only sent as second in command to Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. But Parker had through age lost his capacity for decisive action, and it was to be Nelson who commanded the detached force that attacked the moored Danish defence line in the stream in front of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801, and obtained a Danish capitulation. On Parker’s recall, Nelson succeeded to command-in-chief of the Baltic force, and persuaded the new tsar to reverse the policy of Czar Paul, who had been assassinated. Now very much back in official favour, Nelson was then put in command of the anti-invasion defences in the south of England.

 The defeat of the neutral Danes, despite the apparent collusion of their governors with the French, never inspired much enthusiasm in England. None of the great history and battle painters – de Loutherbourg, Copley, nor Brown – chose to invest time in painting a picture of a subject that was unlikely to be well received. The Battle of Copenhagen, however, was made the subject of a number of pictures, some of which were based on first-hand experience. Amongst the interesting minor works that survive are two drawings by Robinson Kittoe, who was Rear Admiral Thomas Graves’s secretary. His work had intelligence importance, as he

George Arnald, The French flagship L’Orient blowing up at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, 73⬙ ⫻ 106⬙, © nmm bhc 0509.

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depicted the Danish telegraph mast on Kronborg Castle, and he provides an eye witness picture of the Battle of Copenhagen.50 Pocock made two pictures based on the Kittoe sketches, but his representation of the English fleet passing Kronborg has a closer perspective showing the ships and fortress more clearly, and his rendering of the Battle of Copenhagen is only indirectly based on Kittoe’s. Pocock’s ships are fully drawn and his perspective is closer to nature. These pictures were engraved for sale.51 He also painted two watercolour pictures of the battle not closely based on the Kittoe sketches, employing complicated lower deck perspectives, one of which was used to make an engraving of the Destruction of the Whole Danish Line of Defence.52 Two other Pocock pictures in oils of the battle were drawn from the unsatisfactory bird’s eye perspective he had employed for the Nile picture.53 One of Robert Dodd’s more attractive pictures is a view of Parker’s fleet passing the Sound, which is not unlike Pocock’s version of the Kittoe sketch.54 An interesting artistic collaboration was a large print drawn by Lieutenant William Ramage after a picture by Thomas Whitcombe.55 Ramage was lieutenant in hms Polyphemus of 64 guns, which took the last station in Nelson’s line of battle.56 One artist who seems to have taken delight in the battle of Copenhagen was George Thompson, about whom little is known. His work has a “primitive” quality that appeals to modern viewers but must have irritated contemporary sailors. He completed a highly dramatic wood engraving of the battle employing two blocks for left and right hand sheets, and published them himself.57 Buttersworth is also known to have completed a watercolour and an oil painting of the battle.58 Henry Aston Barker visited Copenhagen to make sketches for a panorama for the Leicester Square gallery, and was again warmly received by Nelson.59 There is some reason to believe that he may have received technical advice for his work from Captain William Bligh of Bounty fame. Bligh had commanded at Copenhagen the experimental ship Glatton, a mercantile hull converted to carry an armament entirely of short heavy carronades. The National Maritime Museum possesses an interesting semi-schematic lithograph by Thomas Dighton ra, the architect, of Lord Nelson’s Attack on the Danish Line and City of Copenhagen, which was based on a drawing Bligh made “on the spot.”60 Although the key is missing, this is a singularly clear representation of the subject. The plate was published by Lieutenant Edward Pelham Brenton, and

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Robert Dodd, Copenhagen, passage of the Sound, 24⬙ © nmm bhc 0522.

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was intended for a Naval History of Great Britain which he eventually published. Edward Pelham was the younger brother of one of the marginal artists of naval victory, Jahleel Brenton, and both were sons of Rear Admiral Jahleel Brenton, who had hoisted his flag a few months before. The reason for supposing that Henry Aston may have had access to Bligh’s sketches is purely circumstantial: the following year he was to marry Harriet Maria, Bligh’s eldest daughter. It is evident that Henry Aston found the navy congenial, as well as a good source of income. Pocock may also have had access to Bligh’s schematic, as the composition of one of his Copenhagen oils resembles it.61 Barker’s first-born child was to be named William Bligh Barker, but alas the child died at the age of three. It is believed that William Anderson’s son, William Guido Anderson, served as a midshipman at Copenhagen on the books of hms Bellona. He had inherited something of his father’s capacity as an artist and in 1799 had exhibited at the Royal Academy a painting of The Wolverine engaging two French luggers. His father also painted a picture of the subject, which was engraved by Charles Rosenburg.62 He was the publisher both for his own and for his son’s work. In the National Maritime Museum is preserved a letter from William Guido to his father on

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which are two sketches, presumably by the son, of the action between hms Leander and the French Genereux eighteen days after the Battle of the Nile. The action had ended in Leander’s capture.63 But William Guido’s career was to be a short one. At Copenhagen Bellona grounded under heavy fire, and it is believed that William Guido suffered wounds from which he subsequently died. A midshipman, William Anderson, who joined in London at the age of twenty-two is on Bellona’s muster book at the time of the battle. His name does not appear among those killed in action, and he continued to muster, and purchase slops, tobacco, and dead men’s cloths until Bellona was paid off in June 1802. But there is no record of his then being discharged into another ship, and he did not subsequently pass for lieutenant.64 It must be supposed that he did die, because otherwise it is likely he would have exhibited again in the Royal Academy.

 The events in the Baltic and the renewed threat of invasion diverted attention from the Mediterranean, but it was still an active theatre and it was to be well recorded by several artists who were eye witnesses to the action. The weakness of the younger Jahleel Brenton’s drawing for the print of the Battle of Cape St Vincent makes it all too evident that he was not much of an artist, but apparently the Lords of Admiralty forgave him for that limitation. He had been posted captain in April 1800 and put in command of hms Caesar, Rear Admiral de Saumarez’s flagship. In the battle of Algeciras on 5 July 1801 Brenton distinguished himself, and during the following days his efforts and those of Caesar’s people to repair her for the renewal of action were to prove of decisive importance. In less than six days they shifted her main-mast, fished and secured her fore-mast, which had been shot through in several places, knotted and spliced the rigging, plugged the shot-holes between wind and water, and completed with stores of all kinds, including provisions for four months. The crew worked from dawn to dark and watch and watch all night, and on 12 July warped out of Gibraltar Mole while still swaying up Caesar’s top-gallant-masts and bending sails. The three French ships had been joined by six Spaniards and passed into the Mediterranean, but Saumarez chased with five British, and in a night action destroyed two and captured a third.

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Hubert and Stadler after Captain Brenton, Algeciras, published by E. Harding, 1 January 1802, 98 Pall Mall, bm 1917.12.8.4589.

The first action at Algeciras had been loudly hailed in France as a victory, and this led to French artists’ working with the subject. The National Maritime Museum possesses a pen sketch with grey wash by Pierre Ozanne.65 From the British point of view, however, Algeciras had been an example of British courage, and the subsequent pursuit and night action a glorious affirmation that Britannia ruled the waves. Captain Brenton provided a publisher, E. Harding, with four drawings, which were engraved and sold “for the benefit of the widows, and orphans, of those brave men, who fought, and fell on that glorious occasion.”66 Because of the disappointing qualities of Brenton’s work, the historian is more indebted to several soldier artists for records of Mediterranean naval operations. The most important was John Elliott Woolford,

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John Elliott Woolford, Bay of Marmorice, 35.4

⫻

37.6cm, ngc 29213.12

who had been born in London in 1778 or 1782.67 Nothing is known about his early life, but he is believed to have come from the same artistic family that included a circus equestrienne who impressed Charles Dickens and Princess Victoria, and a Mr G. Woolford, who was an actor.68 The supposition that John Elliott may have studied art with Paul Sandby at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, is inconsistent with the fact that he was drafted at Chatham at the end of 1797 as a private into the 2nd Queen’s Regiment of Foot. Boys were only accepted as cadets at Woolwich on the recommendation of the Master-General of the Ordnance, and it is highly unlikely that under any circumstances a boy with that sort of connections would have subsequently enlisting as a private.69 What unit he was drafted from is unknown. John Elliott saw service in defeating the United Irishmen at Wexford and at the battle of Ballynahinch in 1798, and then in the abortive attempt in 1799 to restore the Stadholder to the throne of the Netherlands.70 On the collapse of the Netherlands campaign, his regiment was sent to form part of General Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s army, which was under orders to drive the French from Egypt. Woolford’s muster was in the company commanded

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by the Lieutenant Colonel of the Regiment, Major Ramsay later the 9th Earl of Dalhousie, who was himself a cartographer.71 This may indicate some previous family connection. When the voyage was broken at Malta, which had been recovered from the French by the Maltese and a squadron commanded by Captain Alexander Ball, rn, Dalhousie commissioned Woolford to make the first of many drawings intended for a souvenir album. In a memoir he drew up in his old age, Woolford wrote that “his Lordship had found out that I was somewhat skilful in sketching, and painting, and … employed me during any leisure, in those pursuits.”72 Amongst the large collection of Woolford watercolours now in the National Gallery of Canada is one of Valetta Harbour, and another of the Malta naval hospital. From Malta the regiment proceeded to Marmorice Bay in Turkey to practise landing operations, and Woolford was allowed opportunity to record some of this work. On 23 February the expeditionary force commanded by General Abercrombie and Vice Admiral Keith sailed in a convoy of 150 ships to Egypt. Dalhousie commanded assaults on the forts at Aboukir and Rosetta, and time was found for Woolford to paint a picture of the landing at Aboukir, and some others of the campaign up the Nile. Following the surrender of Alexandria at the beginning of September 1801, the 2nd Queen’s Regiment made a slow passage west via Sicily and Minorca, where Woolford drew the famous naval hospital, and then moved into garrison at Gibraltar. Dalhousie evidently had no desire to rot as a garrison commander, so he made his way home, and took Woolford with him. Presumably the last of Woolford’s Mediterranean pictures is the view of Gibraltar from the west.73 Woolford wrote that on his return he was set up at Dalhousie Castle, where he was “employed in finishing the many sketches and models” he had collected during his Mediterranean service. The War Department was evidently paying for the completion of Dalhousie’s souvenir album, but when Dalhousie was put in command of the Edinburgh military district, Woolford also acted as his clerk. Woolford’s achievements to date were remarkable enough, and indicate a great deal about his social skills, but he was to go a great deal further. In 1804 he married Margaret Fullerton, who was related to the wife of General Sir Howard Douglas, decided to leave the security of army pay, and set out to establish a career as a professional landscape

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painter.74 It is possible that he was motivated by meeting Alexander Naysmith, who had been commissioned to paint a picture of Dalhousie Castle, but in any event it is most likely that his acceptance by Sir Howard as an in-law was conditional on his leaving the ranks. The fact that an artist with no social position, a common soldier, could become a friend of a senior officer, and even marry into a general officer’s family, says something important about Scottish society at the end of the eighteenth century, but it was nonetheless remarkable social progress. Dalhousie helped Woolford obtain permission from the Commander in Chief, the Duke of York, to leave the army, on condition that he provide a substitute. Woolford remembered that it cost him £50. He mustered for the last time in the 2nd Queen’s regiment in February 1805.75 He and Margaret settled at 12 St James Square in 1805 and in 1807 moved to 2 Terrace, or High Terrace, above Leith Street, both good addresses in the “New” part of Edinburgh New Town.76 Another soldier who was a very competent artist was a military engineer, Major-General John Brown. He did not see service in the Mediterranean, but when reviewing the defences of Cork harbour he painted a sketch of troop ships with the Cold Stream and 3rd Guards embarked lying there prior to their sailing to Egypt.77 His representation of the ships is very effective, but he generally chose for his subjects matter closer to his professional interest in buildings and topography. The third soldier-artist to record his impressions of the Mediterranean theatre was Major Weir, who employed Francis Chesham to engrave a plate with a view from the Malta campaign.78 This is a rather wooden effort with detailed representations of artillery and fortifications, but significantly out of drawing. Because of the work of these soldier artists, the Mediterranean theatre during the period of British counterattack is especially well documented, but they did not have the talent to compete successfully amongst the professional artists, as Woolford was soon to discover. Fortunately, de Loutherbourg felt a picture of the Battle of Aboukir, and General Abercrombie’s death in action, was worthwhile painting despite his advancing years. Unlike the Battle of Copenhagen, Aboukir was a subject without political complications. De Loutherbourg’s The Landing of the British Troops in Egypt is a more conventional picture than are his depictions of naval subjects, but it is nonetheless a work by a great master. Inevitably the canvas was crowded with people, and de Loutherbourg

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General John Brown, Sketch of troop ships with the Cold Stream and 3rd Guards embarked lying [in Cork Harbour] prior to their sailing to Egypt. nls ms 2863 f. 34

gave them the sort of heroic poses that were conventional in historical painting.79 As a military subject it could be regarded as a throwback to his earlier compositions, but it appears probable that at the same time as he was working on it de Loutherbourg was also working on another naval canvas.

 Nelson had been placed in command of the anti-invasion defences largely because his name inspired public confidence. From his experience as a painter of battle pictures, de Loutherbourg felt equipped to advise Farington that “the best mode of defence to be adopted against the French in case they made a successful landing was to waste the country, throw up works and stand on the defensive obliged [i.e., obliging them] constantly to advance against difficulties, & for the English to avoid a pitched battle.”80 But the navy had other ideas about the best way of defeating the French. The front line was not the English coast, or even the English Channel, but was the enemy-controlled harbours. Vigorous measures were taken

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to carry the war to the enemy. It was one of those minor actions that were so appealing to the public that de Loutherbourg chose as the subject for a painting he exhibited at the Academy in 1802. On 21 July, 1801, a French corvette, La Chevrette, was cut out of Camaret Bay by sailors and marines from the squadron blockading Brest. The French had shore batteries placed to fire on the approaching boats, and resistance on board was fierce, but all to no avail. As the editor of the Naval Chronicle put it: “Those who consider themselves in a state to invade the shores of other nations, should at least be in a situation to protect the ships in their own harbours. The undaunted bravery of the English officers and seamen was perhaps never more firmly opposed by an enemy than in this severe conflict; but the heroic determination of the assailants overcame every resistance that could be opposed to them.”81 De Loutherbourg apparently undertook two, or possibly even more, pictures of this dramatic event. The version he was to exhibit at the Royal Academy was his only naval picture to be shown there.82 An original sketch in pen and ink, with wash, survives in the collection of the Maritime Museum. This shows the whole of the corvette, the boarding from two boats, and the fight on deck. He also finished a painting of a detail showing two boat’s-crews boarding over the corvette’s bow, and it was of this picture that James Fittler made an engraving.83

 In the face of undefeated British command of the English Channel, the French were in no situation to attempt an invasion. Instead, they bought time by negotiating at Amiens in March 1802 a short-lived peace with the new British prime minister, Henry Addington, who was glad enough of a respite to recover from the financial burden of war. During the months of peace Nelson was unemployed, thereby having an opportunity to attend to his publicity. Buttersworth, working with an engraver by the name of P. Roberts, published a Plate depicting ships captured by Nelson 1793–1801 and also the Battle of Genoa, Battle off Cape St Vincent, Battle of the Nile and Battle of Copenhagen.84 The most interesting aspect of this work is that there is a note among Nelson’s papers in the British Library, apparently addressed to Buttersworth or Roberts, with a suggestion about the layout of the print and a recommendation about what portrait to use as the central medallion.85 He went into considerable detail: “The Name of each ship to be wrote be-

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tween the Main and Foremast. The Portrait disapproved – only to be like the outline formerly sold by Mr Brydon. The Ships to be put in rotation as captured L’Orient will then be placed as at present.” John Brydon had published the Nelson portrait print by Simon de Koster. Nelson also went into the detail of individual ships. Evidently his interest in his public image was as strong as ever. The respite from war had a particular importance for many of the artists of naval victory because they were at last able to travel again to the continent. The opportunity to visit Paris was all the more welcome because so many art treasures of southern Europe had been brought there as booty. Abraham Raimbach wrote: The short-lived peace that had just been patched up between England and France opened the route to the continent, which had been closed for ten or twelve years, and the eager curiosity of Englishmen to visit the scenes of the revolutionary horrors and eventful changes that had taken place in the interim greatly added to the ordinary interest of a journey to Paris; which, by the by, was then in itself a much more serious undertaking than a similar excursion at present, rendered as it is so rapid and pleasurable by steamboats and safety-coaches. It would be difficult to convey an idea of the rush that was made to the French capital by persons of every class who had the means of transit in their power. The artists in particular mustered in much greater force on this occasion than could have been anticipated, taking into account the proverbial scantiness of their resources.

Having completed work on several plates, so as to acquire the needed fares, Raimbach followed the crowd. One of the moments of excitement was seeing Buonaparte: It is impossible [he wrote] to avoid remarking the deep and universal feeling of pride and admiration with which the French regarded their youthful hero – he was then about thirty-two years old, but looked scarcely so much, perhaps from the slightness of his figure. Of about twenty-five persons collected on benches raised one above another in the window and balcony where I sat, there was no foreigner but myself; and, from the price of admission, the individuals might be fairly considered generally of a respectable station. Of this company, there was not one that did not loudly and enthusiastically express his sentiments in favour of the restorer and promoter of the glory of their country. This, perhaps, is not an unfair instance of the predominating spirit

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of the nation, and naturally leads to the reflection of how powerful and how formidable such a spirit must render such a people! After the review – parade was the French term for it – Bonaparte held a leveé, or réception, which was numerously attended, chiefly by military and foreigners, Englishmen mustering in great numbers.86

Farington and West were amongst the crowd of British artists in Paris. The account Farington entered into his diary runs to 108 pages in the Yale edition.87 He observed, for instance, that Buonaparte’s manner expressed indifference, and His actions corresponded with it. He did not in the least seem to study State and effect. As all circumstances are remarkable about an extraordinary Man, I noticed that He picked His nose very much, – sometimes took Snuff, and would take off his Hat and wipe his forehead in a careless manner. – I also remarked that some of the Officers occasionally spoke to him, without His having ad[d]ressed them, and seemed only to be making such remarks as persons who are on an easy footing do to each other.

Earlier he had noted in his diary that Buonaparte “smiles with his mouth but that his eyes never have a corresponding expression.”88 If Farington had indeed been engaged in intelligence work at the beginning of the war, it may be that he was doing so again. Certainly, he did not suffer any ill consequences for his enthusiasm. With West it was otherwise. His American origins made him more vulnerable, and he owed the king a debt of gratitude. The consequences were the loss of his pension, a suspension of his place in the Academy, and ultimately, it appears, his decision to paint his famous picture of the death of Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. A very much lesser artist to take the road to Paris was the Chelseaborn painter John James Masquerier, whom Charles Turner commissioned to bring back the first portrait of Napoleon Buonaparte to be exhibited in England. This Turner engraved, and to stimulate sales a painting by Masquerier of Bonaparte Reviewing the Consular Guards at the Tuileries Palace was shown at 22 Picadilly. William Cobbett accused Masquerier of being a French agent, but in fact he was no more than a cheat. On the back of a copy of the descriptive pamphlet sold at the showroom, Turner came clean, writing that Masquerier “never saw Buonaparte or any of the Generals. The large Picture was painted in my

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Room in Warren Street, and I painted all the Bridles (and) Saddles, and M. H.B. [Henry Bernard] Chalon the horses. We clear’d a Thousand Pounds by the Picture one 3rd was my share.”89

 Buonaparte’s hatred of Britain was inveterate, and the peace was to be short-lived. In March 1803 King George III warned parliament that French troop movements near the Channel ports made vigilance essential, and in May the fleet was given orders to sweep up French merchantmen to prevent their crews from becoming available to the French Marine. Nelson, now a Vice Admiral, was sent to the Mediterranean as commander. Spain was again forced by the French to contribute to their war effort. When Pitt, once again the prime minister, sanctioned an illconceived attempt to seize the homecoming Spanish treasure ships to prevent the specie from reaching France, Spanish belligerency became inevitable. It was fortunate that none of the artists of naval victory stayed so long on the continent that they were swept up and placed in Buonaparte’s internment camp at Verdun. The threat of invasion, which had been abated by the victories of 1797, 1798 and 1801, once again had to be faced. Farrington was affected enough to have nightmares. On 17 July 1803 he noted in his diary: “I had the last night the most distinct dream of Invasion that could possess the fancy. Of seeing French boats approach in the utmost order, and myself surrounded by them after their landing. I thought they preserved great forbearance not offering to plunder, & that I was in the midst of them conversing in broken English. It seemed to me that they came upon the Country quite unprepared and met with no resistance … It seemed a perfect reality to me and I could scarcely believe it a dream for a little time after I awoke. – There was during my dream a sense of great negligence in not being better prepared to receive such an enemy.”90 Volunteer defence companies were being formed all over the country, and there was discussion of forming a “Military Corps of Artists” under Academy management. William Sandby writes that this was the first occasion the academicians and associates consulted together on any issue, but on August fifth Farington called on West to say that he was “satisfied the attempt w[oul]d be in vain, & that it w[oul]d be most prudent to drop it. That the disinclination on the part of several viz: Hoppner,

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Lawrence, Westall, Smirke & others was so great that [he] was convinced it w[oul]d not succeed.”91 The Elder Brethren of Trinity House, and some of the Younger Brethren, including some East India Company captains, were made of sterner stuff. On 19 July 1803 their offer of service was accepted by the Home Office, and on October third all were sworn into the Trinity House Volunteers at the London Tavern. Their first commandant was William Pitt, and later Lord Spencer, the former First Lord of the Admiralty. The Right Honourable George Rose, who had started a naval career during the Seven Years War but had left on the conclusion of peace and in 1803 was a privy councillor with close connections to William Pitt, recorded the event in his diary: “The sight was really an extremely affecting one. A number of gallant and exceedingly good old men, who had during the best part of their lives been beating the waves, now coming forward with the zeal and spirit of lads, swearing allegiance to the king, with a determined purpose to act manfully in his defence, and for the protection of the capital on the river.”92 One can imagine what their wives had to say about it in the morning! They mustered seventeen times between 11 October and 25 November.93

 These developments brought Major-General Brown back into the story, but not as an artist. He was in the thick of events because he was employed in constructing the defences of the Kent coast. With the civil engineer John Rennie he attended a meeting at Rochester on 21 October 1804, which included the Earls of Camden and Chatham, Pitt, and hrh the Commander in Chief, when it was decided to construct the line of martello towers and the Royal Military Canal. Brown probably approved of the canal, which was intended as an obstacle to troop movement rather than for lateral communication, but not of the beach defences: At this meeting the expensive and diabolical system of Tower Defense was finally resolved on, to an imprecidented extent contrary to the opinions of the best and most experienced officers in our service – but it was carried by the influence of the ordnance people only whose opinions were by no means supported by reasoning – on this occasion Mr. Pitt from whom one would have expected a decided opinion gave into that of others … all that was advanced

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was Tower, Tower, Tower, some large and some small was all the variation proposed by the Engineers and when Gen[era]l Morse was asked if he thought even the number of Towers proposed would be sufficient – He thought not but proposed to place Cannon between them in open Batteries.94

The tower defences were never to be put to the test. The navy was quite capable of keeping the Army of England from ever sailing.

 Immediately on the outbreak of the new war, the fleet movements that were to lead to the battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 had begun. Trafalgar was to be tremendously stimulating for the artists of naval victory, but over a year before that decisive action there occurred a remarkable engagement that brought another artist into the field of naval art. On 15 February 1804, Commodore Nathaniel Dance of the Honourable East India Company, while escorting homeward the Canton trade, fought off an attack by a French battle squadron. Indiamen were built like small ships of the line, and carried full broadsides of guns, but they were not considered to be a match for warships. Dance nevertheless formed line with his Indiamen to protect the smaller and more lightly armed “country ships,” and succeeded by a good show of discipline and gunfire to give the impression that three of his ships were warships. When the French battle squadron under Rear Admiral Linois withdrew, he even pursued it for two hours. The homeward bound fleet from Canton was immensely valuable, and Dance’s successful tactical deception created a sensation. This East Indian subject drew William Daniell into the ranks of the artists of naval victory. Although not himself a professional seaman, William Daniell had so much experience of East India Company shipping as a young man that he may almost be considered in that light. Born in Kingston-on-Hull in 1769, he had been orphaned at ten years of age and brought up by his uncle, Thomas Daniell, ra, in London where he was taught painting and engraving. In 1784 his uncle had embarked on an ambitious commercial and artistic venture, travelling to China in the East Indiaman Atlas, and thence to Calcutta, to make drawings of oriental scenery which were later to be made into engravings. William, fifteen, accompanied his uncle and helped with the work. The collaboration

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between uncle and nephew was of a very high order, and extended to working together on the same engraving plates, and to the joint production of books. One of these, A Picturesque Voyage to India by the Way of China not published until 1810, was to be a volume of plates from drawings made on the voyage, with brief written passages:95 The caption for a plate entitled Passing Beachy Head encapsulated the shipboard life experienced by the traveller setting out for the first time on a long voyage, one which might well last the better part of a year: “The interior of a ship presents society under a phasis equally strange and new; it is not a commonwealth of liberty and equality, but a Chinese system of subordination, with all the minute distinctions of caste, and the watchful jealousy of precedence: it is no community of knowledge; and every individual is restricted to his own department, and interferes not with the duties of another: the steward in the cockpit rarely emerges from his submarine sphere to observe the heavens or the variations of the wind.” Off the Cape of Good Hope they encountered a gale that churned turned up the towering seas of the southern latitudes. Another terrifying episode was the loss of a man overboard in heavy weather, and the futile efforts to recover him. Years later William was to return to these subjects and make plates of exceptional quality and interest.96 The Daniells’ work reflected the emphasis that was placed on accurate reportage by artists officially employed to record the voyages of exploration in the Pacific, although it also satisfied contemporary taste. Evidently they employed a camera obscura to ensure correct proportioning of topographical detail.97 In October 1793 Faringdon met William Daniell’s “mother,” meaning his aunt, who was mistress of “The Swan” at Chertsey. She told him that William and Thomas had “penetrated into the back parts of India, as far as they could prevail upon guides to conduct them, and were within sight of the snowy mountains of Tartary.”98 The Daniells did not return to England until September 1794, again travelling via China. The next seven years were spent in “the most severe application,” preparing the six volumes of Oriental Scenery. The British Museum possesses a sketch of his dated 1794, of hms Lion, a 64gun ship, in which Lord Macartney travelled in 1792–94 en embassy to China.99 William came to exceed his uncle in the quality of his work, but this does not seem to have produced any friction between them. He also began to work in oil, and later experimented with applying colour with watercolour paint, and then treating it with coats of linseed oil.100

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From 1795 he was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy. In 1800 he exhibited there an oil painting of A Fleet of Ships at St. Helena. He was then asked by Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, if he would undertake the job of draughtsman at £300 per annum with the Matthew Flinders expedition in Investigator to Australia, which sailed in July 1801. At first he agreed, but he began to have misgivings. When in May he was offered a commission to paint twelve pictures at £50 each, he called on Farington to ask his advice. Farington recommended that no time be lost in making his excuses to Sir Joseph. Freed from that commitment, Daniell was, according to Raimbach, one of the artists who took advantage of the Peace to visit Paris.101 He had also married Mary Westall, which may have been the real reason he declined the Flinders voyage. In the following seven years he realized £2,000 from his work, of which £505 was a fairly bad debt owed by Mary’s elder brother.102 The official account of Dance’s defence was gazetted by the Admiralty on 11 August 1804, but the news was already out. Farington knew Dance’s uncles, the portrait painter Sir George Nathaniel Dance-Holland, and the younger George Dance, an architect who had turned to portraiture, both of whom had been founding members of the Royal Academy. When, on 9th August Farington made an excursion with friends to the Downs, “where the homeward Indiamen were laying at Anchor having had their men pressed,” to greet his brother William, who had arrived in the Bombay Castle, he took the opportunity to go onboard the flagship, the Earl Camden, and hear a description of the battle from Commodore Dance.103 He was to learn more about the engagement two years later following the capture of Linois by Vice Admiral Warren in March 1806. On this latter occasion, over tea, Commodore Dance said that his defence had been more than mere bluff: “Sir Nath[a]n[ia]l justified Linois[’s] conduct in not engaging further, & told me He was convinced that Linois[’s] ship would have been taken though He might have destroyed an Indiaman or two before He surrendered. He said had Linois broke through his fleet in the night time before the day of the action, He cannot pretend to say but that Linois might have done much mischief, but day light put an end to all apprehension.”104 It is possible that Dance’s generosity was occasioned by the very real concern that Linois had a right to feel for his safety once he was exchanged as a prisoner of war and returned to France. The Naval

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Chronicle’s report of his capture had been included in a news item that also reported the assassination of Vice Admiral Villeneuve on his return to France after Trafalgar.105 Linois had asked Dance to provide for his defence an account of the armament of the Indiamen that had been under his command. William Westall, Mary Westall’s younger brother, had taken the position in the Flinders expedition left vacant by Daniell’s change of heart. As luck had it, he witnessed Dance’s action, probably from the quarterdeck of the Earl Camden. He did not return to England with Dance. Farington’s brother William told him onboard the Bombay Castle that William Westall had accepted a contract to make drawings of Sri Lanka, and was not to return to England until the next year.106 But it is a safe guess that he sent a letter ahead to his sister and brother-in-law telling about his adventures. He may even have sent with it a sketch or two on which a painting of the action could be based. Daniell must have set to work immediately. On 20 September a pair of coloured aquatint prints: The Fleet of the East India Co., Homeward Bound from China, Under the Command of Sir Nathaniel Dance … 15 February 1804, and The Action of Commodore Dance and the Comte de Linois off the Straits of Malacca, were offered for sale, “drawn, engraved and published by William Daniell, 9 Cleveland Square, London.”107 Daniell’s prints displayed an artistry and workmanship of a superior order, although his handling of sea and sky were unremarkable, and his use of a bird’s eye perspective was no more successful in his hands than it was in those of Pocock. On 23 September Farington visited Daniell’s studio and was shown a picture of Dance’s action with Linois, which had been commissioned by the India Captain’s Club. This presumably was an oil painting. Farington later learned that Daniell had been payed “75 guineas each for the two pictures representing the naval action with Linois.”108 A smaller print of the Defeat of Admiral Linois by Commodore Dance was later engraved by Thomas Sutherland after a drawing that Daniell made with Commodore Dance’s advice. This was published in James Ralfe’s Naval Chronology.109 Daniell was not the only artist to work with the subject. Buttersworth painted at least two pictures of Dance’s defence.110 It is believed that at some point in his career he was appointed marine painter to the East India Company. If true, that would make Dance’s triumph an obvious subject for him. He would not have been a witness of the action, but he

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William Daniell, Mast House in Blackwall, oil, 22⬙ ⫻ 42⬙, © nmm bhc 1867.

may well have been on friendly terms with those who were.111 He employed a quarterdeck perspective, and his work has more drama and more life than does Daniell’s. James Fittler’s appointment as Marine Engraver to the King has no more substantial documentation, but his claim to the honorific is supported by the fact that he furnished an engraving of the battle for an “Imperial” print recording Dance’s triumph and knighthood.112 Although Daniell was not a prolific painter of naval subjects, he was to undertake a number of other pictures of considerable interest. The National Maritime Museum possesses two large oil paintings by Daniell, both of naval subjects. Homeward Bound, China Fleet at Anchor in the Straits of Sunda is a distant view of the Indiamen, with some of their crews ashore filling barrels of water.113 Mast House in Blackwall is a particularly interesting picture, but Daniell’s use of the bird’s eye perspective makes it more valuable as an historical record than as art.114

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Daniell’s continued interest in naval subjects is suggested by a graphite sketch he made in 1801 of the launching of hms Dreadnaught, when the cable checking her descent down the slip broke.115 He published another naval aquatint in 1804, A View of the Frigates Stationed in The Hope under the Command of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, 1804. No doubt he hoped those “gallant and exceedingly good old men” had money enough to purchase copies. These pictures constitute almost the sum total of his strictly naval prints, but he continued to work with marine subjects. Between 1800 and 1813 Daniell published a series of eight coloured aquatints of the London Docks. In 1809 he exhibited at the Academy a View of Plymouth Dock and Hamoaze, taken from Mount Edgcombe, and the next year, working with his uncle, he completed an aquatint of the Quarterdeck of an Indiaman, and published the Picturesque Voyage.116

Five T ra fa l ga r

In late 1804 General Buonaparte crowned himself Emperor Napoleon, and in the new year he set in motion a complicated plan for the invasion of England. A series of naval movements were ordered which were intended to bring overwhelming force into the English Channel for long enough that the invasion barges could make the short crossing. As part of this campaign, the Toulon fleet was ordered to collect the Spanish ships in Cadiz and rendezvous in the West Indies with the Rochefort squadron. The Mediterranean fleet under Vice Admiral Nelson set off in pursuit. But circumstances were very different from those of 1798, or even 1801. After a decade of war, the Royal Navy was a uniquely effective force, and the British public, if their cartoonists judged their mood correctly, had grown more confident. Dorothy George, historian of English political cartoons, says that only two cartoons drawn during this period referred to Nelson’s chase of the Toulon fleet. Indicative of the public confidence was Williams’s cartoon of The Coffin Expedition or Boney’s Invincible Armada half seas over.1 The only invasion print in the summer of 1805 was St. George and the Dragon by Gillray. After the Grand Army broke camp and abandoned the planned invasion on 29 August, Rowlandson, in The Departure from the Coast, or the End of the Farce of Invasion, showed the British lion on Dover cliffs, guarded by the British fleet, pissing on the retreating Napoleon. Far more attention was paid to the political question raised by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville’s, illegal use of navy funds to finance his speculations.2 The confidence of the public ensured that there was incentive for serious artists to undertake major works.

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On his first return to European waters, Vice Admiral Villeneuve was brought to action by Sir Robert Calder, with an inferior force, and in a fog. The honours were mixed. The Franco-Spanish force was crippled by disease, and yet managed to escape with the loss of two ships. Calder was later to be censured by a court martial, although he was to be employed again when the administration had had time for second thoughts. There was some public discontent about the meagre results of Calder’s action, but Villeneuve was in no condition to risk action in the Channel, and steered south. Nelson finally caught up with him off Cape Trafalgar at the southwest corner of Spain on 21 October 1805. The brute strength of overwhelming British battle experience brought a decisive victory. Nelson’s tactics in the battle were intended to ensure that the enemy would not be able to disengage once battle was joined. They exposed the leading ships of his two-column attack to fire they could not return, but Nelson and Vice Admiral Collingwood took the leading positions themselves, knowing that their captains would never fail them if the flag officers led from the front. Nelson’s victory was purchased at the price of his own life, and many in England thought the price might have been too high. Farington heard the news as he was travelling up from Massingham on 7 November: “At one o’Clock the Postmaster at Rougham sent his Post Boy with orders to stop while an extraordinary Gazette was read. It announced an engagement off Cadiz between the English Fleet under Lord Nelson & the combined fleets of France & Spain under Admiral Villeneufe &c in which 19 French & Spanish ships were taken and one burnt. – Admiral Villeneufe taken. – This agreeable news was attended with the painful information of the death of Lord Nelson who was killed by a Musket ball.”3 Lord Minto’s letter to his wife catches the mood: “One knows, on reflection, that such a death is the finest close, and the crown, as it were, of such a life; and possibly, if his friends were angels and not men, they would acknowledge it as the last favour Providence could bestow and a seal and security for all the rest. His glory is certainly at its summit, and could be raised no higher by any length of life; but he might have lived at least to enjoy it.”4 And Angelo recorded an ode “Upon the Death of Vice Admiral, Lord Nelson,” written by William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire: Oft has Britannia sought, ’midst dire alarms, Divine protection for her sons in arms;

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Generous and brave, though not from vices free, Britons from Heaven received a mixed decree; To crown their merits, and to low’r their pride, God gave them Victory – but Nelson died!5

On 19 December Farington dined with Captain Robert Moorsom who commanded hms Revenge at Trafalgar. Sitting opposite Farington, he gave him an account of the battle: When Admiral Villeneuve came out of Cadiz He believed Lord Nelson had only 22 sail of the Line, as He knew that 5 ships had been dispatched for water &c but did not know that 5 ships had arrived from England to supply their place. Admiral Villeneuve concluding that Lord Nelson w[oul]d not engage him with 22 Sail of the Line against 33 determined to push for the Mediterranean to which He was farther instigated by having obtained information that on the day following he would be superseded in his command by another French Admiral. – Some of his ships came out of the port of Cadiz at 7 o’Clock on the morning of the 19th of October, which Capt[ai]n Blackwood who commanded the frigate of observation seeing from circumstances that the fleet was coming out, communicated to Lord Nelson who was then 60 miles distant so rapidly by signals that at 10 o’Clock His Lordship was acquainted with it. On Monday Oct[obe]r 21st ab[ou]t 12 o’Clock His Lordship was enabled to bring the combined Fleets to action. Capt[ai]n Moorshum s[ai]d the French managed their ships and fought them with more activity than the Spaniards. – Immediately after the Bucentaur, Admiral Villeneuve’s flag ship struck, He was taken out of that ship & carried on board the Mars while that ship was in Action, & put into the Purser’s cabin.6

Dining again with Moorsom the following June, Farington learned that “Lucas, one of the French Captains of a 74 in the Battle of Trafalgar having boasted to Bonoparte that He sh[oul]d have [taken] the Victory of 100 guns, which had ceased firing, had not the Téméraire come to Her assistance, Captain Moorshum, who commanded the Revenge in that action, spoke to Capt[ai]n Hardy ab[ou]t it, who said it was true that once or twice the Victory did cease to fire in order to put the fire out which began to blaze in Lucas’s ship which was so near the Victory that the explosion of the guns of the Victory produced that effect. – The assertion that the Victory would have been taken was founded upon that circumstance.”7

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In December 1820 Farington heard from Dr Alexander John Scott, Nelson’s chaplain, that while the admiral was being carried below “from the upper Deck he noticed something wrong ab[ou]t the Tiller rope and ordered it to be put right. – Dr. Scott s[ai]d – whatever Lord Nelson might have to do he did instantly. It was his habit to be always prepared.”8 Haydon’s reaction was mixed: “His death affected me for days. But all our fears of invasion were now over, and we looked forward to our pursuits with a degree of confidence which those only can estimate who passed their early days among the excitement of perpetual war.” A few years later he picked up a tid-bit about Trafalgar while he was travelling: “We took our place in the morning Coach, and arrived at Wells in the afternoon at three. I was excessively amused by a Sailor, who belonged to the Victory and was at Trafalgar. What he told me had all [the] simplicity of truth. He said as they were going down into action, Lord Nelson came round to them and told them not to fire till they were sure of their object. “When he came down,” said he, “we were sky-larking, as every thing was ready & guns double shotted.” What d’ye mean by sky-larking?” said I.” “Jumping over each other’s head,” he answered, “to amuse ourselves till we were near enough to fire.” He was a robust, fine, stout, weather beaten fellow.”9 The nation mourned Nelson, and gave him a state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral. Thomas and William Daniell watched the procession of barges coming up the river past the Tower, and Farington was able to give William a ticket to St Paul’s.10 John Rigaud, who had painted Nelson’s portrait twenty-five years before, was another witness.11 The construction of the elaborate funeral car was entrusted to Rudolph Ackermann, who commissioned the design from Abbé Ange Denis McQuin, who made it suggest a First Rate Ship of the Line. Ackermann engraved a plate of the car himself, which was published by J. Page on 10 January 1806, the day after the funeral.12 Charles Turner’s engraving of a portrait of Nelson by John Hoppner was published on the day of the funeral itself.13 Haydon saw the funeral, and was scathing in his comments about “its utter want of taste,” and about the government’s employing Ackermann instead of “the first artist of the day,” by which description he undoubtedly meant himself.14

 Benjamin West reportedly told a visitor from Boston in 1815, George Ticknor, that just before Nelson

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Gilbert Stuart, Benjamin West, oil, c. 1785, npg 349.

went to sea for the last time, West sat next to him at a large entertainment given to him here, and in the course of the dinner Nelson expressed to Sir William Hamilton his regret, that in his youth he had not acquired some taste for art and some power of discrimination. “But,” said he, turning to West, “there is one picture whose power I do feel. I never pass a printshop where your ‘Death of Wolfe’ is in the window, without being stopped by it.” West, of course, made his acknowledgements, and Nelson went on to ask why he had painted no more like it. ‘Because, my Lord, there are no more subjects.’” “D—n it,” said the sailor, “I didn’t think of that,” and asked him to take a glass of champaigne. “But, my lord, I fear your intrepidity will yet furnish me such another scene; and, if it should, I shall certainly avail myself of it.” “Will you?” said Nelson, pouring out bumpers, and touching his glass violently against West’s – “will you, Mr. West? then I hope that I shall die in the next battle.”

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James Lonsdale, James Heath, oil, 1830, npg 771.

That story is a little garbled, as Sir William had died in 1803, two years before. However, Nelson had been a fellow dinner guest with West and Sir William on 23 December 1800, and there is no reason to question its gist, which is entirely in keeping with Nelson’s personality.15 In 1805 West was already sixty-seven years old and had been working in London for forty-two years. He had never previously exhibited a naval picture, but as the recognized master of heroic history painting it was appropriate that he should honour his commission after Nelson’s death. Another story was told to Farington by West himself, who said that as early as 19 November James Heath, who was History Engraver to the King, had called to suggest a business partnership. The proposal was that West would “paint a picture of Lord Nelson’s Victory & Death, and that He [i.e., Heath] would engrave a Plate from it, and that they should make it a partnership concern. The picture to be considered as a companion to that of the death of General Wolfe.”16 West might not have found the financial incentive sufficient in other times, but the break-

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down of relations with the king, the cancellation of his pension, and the cabal against him at the Royal Academy all suggested that it might be politic to undertake a picture of the subject.17 He said to Farington that “it had been a great motive to induce Him to paint that picture The Death of Lord Nelson, to shew the Academy what they had done in causing the Author of it to withdraw himself, and an Architect to be placed in his room.”18 West painted three versions of the subject, which were exhibited in 1807 and 1811, including a highly allegorical canvas, The Immortality of Nelson, which certainly would have pleased his “sitter.” In it, the lifeless body of Nelson, provided with an “ideal” roman nose, is being borne aloft from the arms of Neptune by Victory, and received in Glory by Britannia. Although the motion is upwards, Nelson’s broken body echoes the traditional Deposition from the Cross much as West’s representation of Wolfe’s death on the plains of Abraham outside Quebec had done. By clever painting, Nelson’s missing right arm was replaced by two putti, or “geniuses.” It is hard for a twenty-first-century viewer to catch the mood, but the execution is wonderful and includes sea monsters, British lions, the naked putti with tiny inadequate wings that West described as being “figurative that the influence of his genius still exists,” a trident, and a laurel wreath. Nineteenth-century viewers also had their reservations. Heath’s son Charles executed an engraving from West’s Immortality, and it was used as a frontispiece to volume I of Clarke and M’Arthur’s Life of Nelson, which was to be published in 1809.19 The plate was singled out for criticism by the reviewer in the Quarterly Review who complained: “Why will painters thus wantonly abuse their prerogative? … The invisible world is not within the artist’s province.”20 Or at any rate it ought not to be. When in 1800 Romney had painted a highly allegorical image of the wreck of a Dutch East Indiaman at the Cape of Good Hope, his work had already been a rarity.21 West’s first version of The Immortality of Nelson was conceived as a Sketch for a Monument to Lord Nelson, which placed the picture in the centre and added as supporters mourning sailors and marines, and the hulks of the San Josef and San Nicolas, which would have been executed in stone.22 The commission for the monument in St Paul’s Cathedral was actually awarded by the Committee of Taste to the sculptor John Flaxman, whose patriotism was unquestionable, but West’s idea was adapted to the portico of the King William Block of the Naval Hospital at Greenwich.

Benjamin West, The Immortality of Nelson, oil 35.5⬙ © nmm bhc 2905.

⫻

29.5⬙,

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Flaxman had consistently condemned French aggression, and in 1797 had written a letter to the president and council of the Royal Academy, West, condemning French pillage of Italian art treasures. In 1800 he had written to a committee of gentlemen who were hoping to erect a great pillar in honour of British arms, suggesting instead a colossal statue of Britannia Triumphant on Greenwich Hill, 200 feet high. Fortunately, that idea had been ignored. He had gone with the other artists to Paris during the peace of Amiens to see the paintings in the Louvre, but he had not joined West in his attendance on Napoleon. He had thereby qualified for the work of monumental sculptor. Besides his design for a memorial to Nelson in St Paul’s, he was also commissioned to execute one of Earl Howe. West’s second painting for the Life of Nelson was The Death of Lord Nelson in the Cockpit of the “Victory.” This time his work was more or less naturalistic, although again he could not resist giving Nelson the Roman nose.23 It was not very successful. West most directly fulfilled his supposed commission from Lord Nelson – and his deal with Heath – by painting a large 70⬙ by 96⬙ canvas that traded upon his successful Death of General Wolfe but also acknowledged the value of the newer ideas of his pupils Copley and Brown. West’s The Death of Lord Nelson, now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, was virtually a posed group portrait with Nelson’s broken body in the centre.24 The Times’s comment was that it contained “an uncommon number of Portraits of the Naval Officers who were present at that interesting scene, upon the quarter-deck of the Victory.”25 West paid a number of the Victory’s sailors a guinea expenses to travel up from Chatham to be sketched in his studio.26 The faces of the characters are all carefully drawn, and when Heath published his print in 1811, he also published a key to the individuals portrayed.27 Nevertheless, they are idealized, and again Nelson’s nose conforms more to classic ideals than to anything his mother would have recognized. West placed his subject on hms Victory’s quarterdeck where Nelson was shot, but not where he died. He explained to Farington that Britannia’s hero could not die on a pallet in Victory’s orlop: There was no other way of representing the death of a Hero but by an Epic representation of it. It must exhibit the event in a way to excite awe & veneration & that which may be required to give superior interest to the representation must be introduced, all that can shew the importance of the Hero.

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Wolfe must not die like a common soldier under a Bush, neither should Nelson be represented dying in the gloomy hold of a ship, like a sick man in a Prison Hole. To move the mind there should be a spectacle presented to raise & warm the mind, & all sh[oul]d be proportioned to the highest idea conceived of the Hero. No boy, s[ai]d West, w[oul]d be animated by a representation of Nelson dying like an ordinary man. His feelings must be roused & His mind inflamed by a scene great & extraordinary. A mere matter of fact will never produce this effect.28

His composition is less effectively structured than had been his Death of General Wolfe. The large number of portraits makes the subject resemble a class photograph, with a romantic back-drop of billowing sails and flags. In his Wolfe West had paid a nodding acknowledgment to the classical tradition by placing a nearly naked Indian in the scene, and in the Nelson among the crowd of officers in formal uniforms appear two sailors with their shirts stripped to reveal their muscles. In the exhibition catalogue he wrote that he had “laid the heroic Nelson wounded on the quarterdeck of his ship, The Victory, with his Captain (now Sir Thomas Hardy) holding the dying Hero by the hand, and from a paper in the other, announcing to him the number of ships taken from the enemy’s Combined Fleet. The surrounding groups of gallant officers and men are sympathizing with each other in the sufferings of their wounded Friend and expiring Commander: and the dead and wounded in the several groups are introduced as episodes, to commemorate these with honour, who fell on board the Hero’s ship in that distinguished action.”29 This picture was immensely popular. In the opinion of the painter Sir Nathaniel Dance-Holland. West’s Death of Lord Nelson was “far inferior” to his Death of General Wolfe. He said to Farington that West “was only copying Himself, & proceeding in a fixed manner.” Most modern viewers would agree, but at the time the general public were not concerned. Farington noted on 2 July: West came in the evening … He spoke of the vast popularity of his picture of “the Death of Lord Nelson.” He believed 30,000 persons had been to His House to see it. He s[ai]d He issued 6,500 cards for admittance and some came with parties of 8 or 10. – Besides numbers who were personally known to Him came, and many wrote notes to have their friends introduced. He s[ai]d those who came behaved extremely well, and He had sustained no loss or damage. – He said [James] Heath had assured Him that the plate would yield

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1,500 good impressions for Subscribers. – I expressed the hope that Heath w[oul]d not be, as [for] instance of the Plate of the Death of Major Pierson, 7 years ab[ou]t it. He replied that w[oul]d not do for Him, considering what 7 years w[oul]d be at his [West’s] age.30

The engraving work took much longer than Heath had anticipated, which obliged the joint proprietors to raise the subscription price from £4 to £6 guineas for proofs, and £2 to £3 guineas for common copies. West said that so many subscriptions had already been sold that they lost some £1,500 they might have made. Heath complained to Farington in December 1807 that “for the sake of introducing many portraits, West has put in so many heads that something of a spotty effect is produced by it which will be difficult to regulate.” Finally, on 23 March 1811, Farington went with West to Dixon the printers to watch the impressions being made. Two months later he met Heath, who “expressed the great pleasure He felt in having finished His plate of The Death of Lord Nelson from West’s picture, which had been a very heavy task with[ou]t affording him amusement. The engraving of Coats &- Waistcoats He s[ai]d was dry work.” 31 Raimbach gave Heath’s work a rather mixed review. Born in London about 1758, Heath had been a pupil of Joseph Collyer, “a respectable engraver.” Heath complained, I believe, of the severity of Collyer’s treatment of him, and his rigid enforcement of close application. Without entering upon Collyer’s motives, there can be little doubt but that Heath derived the greatest advantage from this circumstance, inasmuch as that high degree of mechanical execution, which constitutes one of the fascinating qualities of Heath’s engraving, may fairly be deduced from it … Its popularity afforded Heath an opportunity of turning his talent to account, of which he did not fail to profit. He constantly employed a considerable number of assistants, from whose labours he derived great pecuniary advantages, and willingly sacrificed a portion of his reputation as an artist to his desire of becoming a rich man. Hence many of the works bearing his name contain but little of his labour, and are far below that standard of tasteful and elegant execution in which his excellence was acknowledged. His larger productions, the Riot in Broad Street, Death of Major Pierson, and Death of Nelson, do not maintain a very high character.

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In Raimbach’s eyes’ Heath aggravated his faults by accepting the Royal Academy’s diploma of Associate Engraver “to the great vexation and surprise” of his fellow engravers who had refused to be condescended to by the painters.32

 The painting of The Death of Nelson, which West had disparaged as representing Nelson “dying in the gloomy hold of a ship, like a sick man in a Prison Hole,” was the work of Arthur William Devis.33 Son of the portrait painter William Devis, who had supervised his education, he exhibited sixty-five pictures at the Royal Academy between 1779 and 1821 but was never elected an associate. He worked for a while in Bengal, but returned to London in 1795 and by 1800 was bankrupt. According to the report in The Artist, he undertook the Death of Nelson as a commission for John Boydell’s nephew Josiah, who had offered a prize of £500 for the best oil study for a picture of Nelson’s death. He received permission to leave prison to undertake the work, which had to be finished by 21 March 1806.34 The arts reviewer of the Examiner, Robert Hunt, wrote that Devis “presented a faithful and most interesting representation of the death of one of our greatest naval heroes, precisely as it occurred in the Cockpit of the ship Victory. To do this with the utmost possible precision, Mr. Devis went on board the Victory immediately on her coming into port, stayed there several days, heard all the particulars from the mouths of the officers who were in the action, and made accurate drawings of the Cockpit and other requisites for the piece. All the figures are portraits painted from life, except Nelson’s, which was taken from the corpse.” Despite the fact that Devis’s hero was “seen in his complacent and resigned countenance, his eye beaming with faint but exulting lustre on his hearing the victory announced,” Hunt was very much impressed by the picture, and referred back to it frequently in subsequent issues.35 Devis felt no need to generalize the appearance of his figures, but he did make the deckhead too high, presumably so as not to cramp his subject. The hope of winning Boydell’s prize may also have tempted Mather Brown, who was avoiding imprisonment but badly needed the money. He selected the moment when Nelson was shot as the subject for Lord Nelson’s Victory off Trafalgar. It is not clear that his irony was deliberate because he showed Nelson’s body being supported by Captain Hardy

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rather than by angels who might have carried him to glory. Several of the officers are given reasonably life-like faces, but the scene lacks realism. On first inspection the whole effort appears to betray a decline in Brown’s abilities, but there are also indications of the more impressionistic approach that was to make Brown’s sketch for the 1825 Nile competition a progressive work.36 It was Devis, however, who was awarded the prize, no doubt to the satisfaction of his creditors.37 The painting was exhibited at Boydell’s gallery in Cheapside without charge, and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807.38 An engraving after Devis’s painting by William Bromley was published by Boydell on 2 March 1812.39 Brown finished his picture before October 1807 and, having failed to sell it to Boydell, he considered raffling it.40 Copley had also been commissioned to paint a picture of the death of Nelson, by “Thomson, the Print seller – of Newport Street,” who offered him £1,200 “pounds or guineas” and intended to finance an engraving by subscription. The money would have been very welcome, but the commission was never finished. Sukey Copley lamented to a friend that the picture had had to be abandoned because her husband suffered a fall that sprained his arm and rendered him unable to complete his work.41 In March 1803 Copley had estimated his average annual income at £1,200, but a year later the female model at the Academy told Farington that Copley scarcely paid her half her usual fee of one shilling per hour despite the fact that he worked her very hard.42 That was to prove the last of Copley’s naval history subjects, but he was still painting in the summer of 1810 when Farington visited him “and remarked upon the neatness of His Painting room.” Copley told him that he could not paint “unless everything was in order ab[ou]t Him. He c[oul]d not bear to see rags & other things scattered about.”43 He was to die in 1815. The British Institution’s 1824 prize competition was to inspire a “death of Nelson” picture by Denis Dighton, despite the fact that the subject was supposed to be the battle itself. Dighton had been born in 1792, and attended the Royal Academy school. In 1806 his father, Robert, who was a caricaturist, came unstuck when it was discovered that he had stolen prints from the British Museum in order to copy them for sale. This forced him to flee from London, but that notwithstanding, in 1811 the Prince of Wales got a commission for Denis in the 90th regiment. He soon resigned in order to marry and settle in London, but

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the prince continued to favour him, obtaining for him an appointment as military draughtsman. He died very young, in August 1827, but before that time he had exhibited seventeen pictures at the Academy, none of which was of a naval subject. Dighton got around West’s problem with the gloomy hold by selecting the moment Nelson was hit for The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, fall of Nelson.44 The subject is the deck of hms Victory seen from aloft, swept with a hail of small-arms shot from the rigging of La Redoutable. Dighton gave the fallen admiral no more deck space than could reasonably be spared in the heat of the battle. Hunt was enthusiastic. “In [number] 165, are seen all the terror and intense employment of the sailors on the deck of the Victory, as she was engaged with the Redoubtable, and the falling of Lord Nelson from a shot. It is a heart-moving and highly natural scene, from the hand of Mr. Dighton.”45 But it is unlikely that Anthony Pasquin would have been moved by Dighton’s fastidious attention to the detail of buttons and cross belts. The picture is too cold and tidy to betray much of the confusion, noise, and shock of battle. Even a rebel like Samuel Drummond undertook a Death of Nelson. By placing the viewer on the main deck looking aft toward the break of the quarterdeck, he was able to create a picture with its personae on two levels and crowding the quarterdeck ladder. He exhibited a “sketch” of it at the Royal Academy in 1806, and a finished painting at the British Institute in 1807. In its fulsome review of the latter, The Times descanted: “Mr Drummond having himself served in the navy for upwards of seven years may fairly be presumed to be in his own element, and we may follow him with the utmost confidence to the very spot where the catastrophe befel the Heroic Nelson, and which made the nation weep!” Of Drummond’s personae “(and each of them is a true sailor or soldier),” the reviewer noted with satisfaction that “none are maimed or halt, but the wounded or the dying, all else are men and heroes!” He concluded: “This picture, which must be considered as one of the sheet anchors of the present collection, remains at present unsold!!!” Drummond also exhibited in the same show a much larger work entitled Death of Nelson with Portraits, which was probably a composite piece.46 In 1808 Robert Hunt wrote in the Examiner about Drummond’s offerings of that year: “A painter of genius will never enter into a minuter detail than is necessary for the elucidation of his subject, but it is a pity he should be slovenly. Mr. Drummond is so in his dabby forms, his

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unfinished outline of flesh, and his fuzzy coarseness of draperies, which are destitute of square markings. Mr. Drummond must know that vigour of outline is a characteristic of the sublime and beautiful.”47 But later he was impressed with the Death of Nelson when Drummond revived it in 1825 for the British Institution’s exhibition, although he was confused about the title: “The intrepidity, activity, and varied employment of a man of war’s crew in action, and the pathetic incident of the carrying down from deck of Nelson when mortally wounded, are fine features in Mr. Drummond’s Battle of Trafalgar, and the grouping is masterly.”48 Drummond had, in fact, also painted a large and very striking oil painting of the Battle of Trafalgar.49 This shows something of de Loutherbourg, both in its use of recognizable figures in the sea and in boats in the foreground, and in the wedge of billowing smoke reaching into the sky. It is an impressive work in its own right, although Drummond did not command the ability de Loutherbourg possessed in his prime to impart a sense of energy to his picture. But this is not the picture Hunt found so impressive. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool possesses a large oil version of Drummond’s Death of Nelson, that is supposed to be the one that was exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution.50 Several studies for the painting survive, including one in the Walker Gallery and three in the National Maritime Museum.51 Drummond experimented with placing his perspective in the aft hatchway looking upward to the crowd carrying Nelson down the ladder, but evidently decided that this positioning was too constricted and chose a view of the quarterdeck companion. In the Walker Gallery version, the composition is eccentric, with a crowd of people supporting Nelson at the foot of the starboard side quarterdeck ladder. This was replaced in a watercolour at the National Maritime Museum with a perspective that shows the ladder and mizzen mast both in the centre of the picture, at the cost of considerable violence to Victory’s deck plan and stability.52 It was published in February 1807 as a mezzotint engraving by an unknown engraver, and in October 1809 Drummond himself published it as an etching. Drummond’s print is a wider view, but its portraiture, surprisingly, is considerably weaker.53 A version of the painting in the Norwich Castle Museum uses this revised composition.54 It may be speculated that the liberties J.M.W. Turner took with naval architecture in his 1806 and 1823 Trafalgar pictures stimulated Drummond to a similar freedom.

Denis Dighton, The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, fall of Nelson, oil 30⬙ ⫻ 42⬙, © nmm bhc 0552.

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Compositionally there is some similarity between Drummond’s Death of Nelson and another painting he exhibited in 1808 of The Action between the Windsor Castle packet, of 150 tons, and 28 men, commanded by Captain Rogers, and Le Jeune Richard, French privateer, of 250 tons, and 92 Men …55 This showed the packet’s commander in the act of boarding the Frenchman, with the figures of boarders and defenders arrayed on ladders and decks in almost a cruciform. The compositional parallel is of greater interest because it draws a subjective parallel between the heroic death of a famous admiral and the heroism of a very lowly packet commander. Again, Drummond published a print of the painting, this time engraved by William Ward.56 Drummond’s interest in the lesser actors in the drama was continued in 1813, when he exhibited a portrait of Nelson’s daughter Horatia.57

 Apart from the deaths of Nelson, Trafalgar was to be painted again and again by almost every artist interested in attempting a naval subject. There were to be other battles, and many single ship engagements later in the war, which was to drag on for another ten years, but nothing was to equal in the public mind the importance of Nelson’s three victories, and his death in the last and greatest. These became the great icons of British self-esteem, and accordingly the subject of many works of art. Haydon angrily commented in his journal in December 1812: “At Nelson’s death, monuments & pillars were voted & erected at every considerable and every opulent Town by Parliaments of England & corporations of London. Neither the Parliament nor the Corporation, neither Glasgow or Portsmouth, neither Noble or Gentleman, ever employed or thought of employing one single Painter, in any way, large or small, to illustrate, to decorate or honour his [ie. the] illustrious Death of one of the greatest heroes …”58 Apparently he had forgotten about Joseph Boydell’s prize, but he was right that people preferred their monuments to be in stone. He had himself earlier suggested that a colossal statue of Neptune should be erected at the Admiralty, “one foot on one side & one foot on the other, holding in one hand the telegraph, towering in the air so as to be visible for miles,” and wanted another statue of Britannia built on the Shakespeare Cliff at Dover overlooking the scene of Napoleon’s

Samuel Drummond, The Action between the Windsor Castle packet, of 150 tons, and 28 men, commanded by Captain Rogers, and Le Jeune Richard, French privateer, of 250 tons, and 92 Men … oil, 62⬙ ⫻ 47⬙, © nmm bhc 0579.

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camps around Boulogne. But “so little are the people acquainted with the great purposes of Art,” he complained, “that any mention of any colossal, great, or Public [undertaking] is literally a source of ridicule.”59 The decision of the British Institution in 1824 to offer prizes for sketches of the Nile and Trafalgar may have been belated, but it did finally meet Haydon’s complaint. De Loutherbourg painted at least one Trafalgar. In January 1804 he had given Farington a picture of his life during his “golden” years: “Loutherbourgh told me that He usually goes to Bed at Eleven o’Clock & rises ab[ou]t 8 – That He is commonly 2 Hours in his Bed room before Breakfast – That He washes himself over every morning. That He drinks Port Wine more or less every day, considering it necessary in this Climate – That He is sometimes a month or Six weeks together in the House not once going out.” Smirke told Farington that he had dined in Chiswick in company with the de Loutherbourgs, and found that he was “a great favorite in that neighborhood on acc[oun]t of His good nature & amusing qualities, – & Mrs. Loutherburgh is extremely good natured.”60 In May Farington noted after a conversation with de Loutherbourg that “the Society in the vicinity of Hammersmith Terrace,” where de Loutherbourg was living, “was spoken of as being sociable & neighbourly so as to render a residence there very desireable.” “The Margrave of Anspach calls upon Loutherbourgh very frequently & possesses great regard for him, but Mrs. Loutherbourgh remarked that He had never employed Mr. L. to paint a single picture. Liberality does not seem to be one of his qualities. Though He occasions a good deal of trouble by calling often He never gave anything to any servant of theirs.” De Loutherbourg’s Trafalgar betrays his growing age but is nonetheless a fine picture.61 Trafalgar was to be the subject of Buttersworth’s only picture exhibited at the British Institution. At least nine of his paintings of Trafalgar, oils and watercolours, have passed through the London sale rooms in the last several decades.62 A Buttersworth oil of Trafalgar at the end of the Action, now at the National Maritime Museum, is a lovely piece of work with the ships under jury rig on a rocking green sea.63 The scene is virtually the same as that described by Lieutenant Paul Harris Nicolas, Royal Marines: Before sunset all firing had ceased. The view of the fleet at this period was highly interesting, and would have formed a beautiful subject for a painter.

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Just under the setting rays were five or six dismantled prizes, on one hand lay the Victory with part of our fleet and prizes, and on the left hand the Sovereign and a similar cluster of ships; the remnant of the combined fleet was making for Cadiz to the northward; the Achille had burnt to the water’s edge, with the tricolour ensign still displayed, about a mile from us, and our tenders and boats were using every effort to save the brave fellows who had so gloriously defended her; but only two hundred and fifty were rescued, and she blew up with a tremendous explosion.64

The National Maritime Museum also has a Buttersworth watercolour of the Battle of Trafalgar.65 Pocock’s work on the Trafalgar campaign was extensive. Victory had sighted Stromboli on 28 January 1805 while pursuing the Toulon squadron in its first attempt to break out of the blockade. Pocock drew a picture of The Victory off Stromboli that was used by Clarke and M’Arthur for their Life of Nelson.66 If Pocock was in the Mediterranean in the mid1790s it is likely that the topographical detail was sketched at that time. He may also have sketched the Victory at the same time, as she had been the flagship of the Mediterranean fleet for most of the period from Hood’s taking command in 1793 until Jervis’s last cruise from Corsica in 1796.67 The example of Pocock’s work possessed by the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings is a lovely watercolour of H.M.S. Windsor Castle Firing. This could have been painted at any time, but there is an association with Sir Robert Calder’s action, as Windsor Castle took the heaviest punishment in the action, and Calder’s subsequent tactics were influenced by a need to protect her.68 Of the battle of Trafalgar itself Pocock painted another of his bird’s eye perspective pictures.69 Another version is in the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth.70 William Anderson painted a pair of pictures of Calder’s action which are now in the National Maritime Museum.71 Thomas Whitcombe’s version of the same subject was to be engraved by Thomas Sutherland and published in 1817 as part of James Jenkin’s series of “Naval Achievements.”72 Robert Cleveley designed two views of the battle of Trafalgar as decorations for presentation swords.73 These appear to be his last depictions of a specific naval event. According to the account Farington had, Cleveley was visiting Dover with his wife when he fell down a small cliff or wall.74 He died some days later, on 28 September 1809, from the injury he had sustained.

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Nicholas Pocock, H.M.S. Windsor Castle Firing, 146 bm 1870.12.10.234.

⫻

220mm,

In Liverpool, one of Robert Salmon’s earliest paintings was a Battle of Trafalgar, which he painted as a speculation, and sold for £8 guineas.75 One of the most impressive of the Trafalgar prints is a mezzotint by Thomas Hellyer, ra, who not only drew and engraved the picture but also published it himself. Clearly he took liberties with the subject in order to fill his canvas by closing the battle into a smaller extent of searoom, but that license was so common as hardly to require comment.76 Hellyer was an architect, and he exhibited at the Academy only architectural drawings. Another print of the subject is a massive primitive wood engraving by George Thompson.77

 For the young John Constable, Trafalgar was to be his only essay into the arts of naval victory, a cameo role. As his artistic abilities matured, it was to become apparent that his gifts as a sea painter were unique, but he came to object to marines on principle, and confined almost all of his to his private sketch books.78 His single naval subject completed for exhibition was His Majesty’s Ship Victory, Captain E. Harvey, in the Memorable Battle of Trafalgar, between two French ships of the line.79

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The title is a bit of a give-away, because Captain Eliab Harvey commanded the Téméraire at the battle of Trafalgar, while Victory was commanded by Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy. The picture is a large watercolour of quite unusual composition. The ships in the main group are totally dismasted except for a single foremast left standing. There is something wrong with the perspective. There isn’t really room for the forward part of the middle ship in the sandwich. But despite that, as a sketch it had the potential to be one of the best of the Trafalgar pictures. According to Charles Robert Leslie, his friend and fellow artist who wrote the first biography of Constable, “The subject was suggested to him by the story of a Suffolk man who had been on the ship during the battle.”80 It is a pity Constable did not return to the subject when he was more experienced. Unfortunately it has become so faded that the Victoria and Albert museum cannot exhibit it. Constable had early found support from Sir George Beaumont, whose mother lived near the Constables in Dedham, but Constable’s family had been reluctant to see him regard painting as a profession. He had gone to work in the family milling firm. Leslie writes that Constable was “remarkable among the young men of the village for muscular strength, and being tall and well formed, with good features, a fresh complexion, and fine dark eyes, his white hat and coat were not unbecoming to him, and he was called in the neighbourhood the ‘Handsome Miller.’”81 He did not succeed in persuading his father to let him leave the family firm, and become a student at the Royal Academy until February 1799 when he was admitted with Farington’s assistance.82 He roomed with Ramsay Richard Reinagle, the panoramist, but soon quarrelled over what he considered was a weakness in Reinagle’s character, and left. Reinagle was to be elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1823, but was forced to resign in 1848 for exhibiting as his own a painting by another artist. Evidently he had inherited his father’s capacity for imitation, which in Dayes’s words had led him to specialize in “making old pictures.”83 West, who was then the president of the Academy, was sufficiently impressed by Constable’s work that in 1802 he urged him to turn down the offer of a post as drawing master at the Royal Military Academy in Great Marlow. Constable wrote to his friend Dunthorne of his great relief that he had escaped a fate he was sure would have destroyed him as an artist.84 In the spring of 1803 Constable had the opportunity to take a sketching voyage from London on an East Indiaman, the Coutts, commanded

John Constable, His Majesty’s Ship Victory, Captain E. Harvey, in the Memorable Battle of Trafalgar, between two French ships of the line, 20⬙ ⫻ 28½⬙, v&a, ws4 169-1888.

John Constable, self-portrait, oil, npg 901.

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by a friend of his father, Robert Torin. He had already taken one sketching trip to clear his head of the academic work with other people’s paintings, and the voyage downriver was to introduce him to another aspect of nature. The Coutts was bound for China, but Constable sailed with her only as far as Deal. The voyage of about seventy-five miles was to take a month because of the need to await a fair wind at every bend in the channel. In all he was to make 130 sketches, mostly rather slight works in a strong pencil line, some with a grey wash. They are held to have been strongly influenced by the paintings of Van de Velde which he had been studying at the Academy, but at least they were made from life. “I was near a month on board,” Constable wrote to Dunthorne, “and was much employed in making drawings of ships in all situations. I saw all sorts of weather. Some the most delightful, and some as melancholy. But such is the enviable state of a painter that he finds delight in every dress nature can possibly assume.” At Gravesend where the channel runs to the northward it was evidently necessary to anchor and await a favourable wind. Constable decided to walk across the Cooling marshes to the Medway. When the ship was at Gravesend, I took a walk on shore to Rochester and Chatham. Their situation is beautiful and romantic, being at the bottom of finely formed and high hills, with the river continually showing its turnings to great advantage. Rochester Castle is one of the most romantic I ever saw. At Chatham I hired a boat to see the men of war, which are there in great numbers. I sketched the Victory in three views. She was the flower of the flock, a three decker of (some say) 112 guns. She looked very beautiful fresh out of Dock and newly painted. When I saw her they were bending the sails; which circumstance, added to a very fine evening, made a charming effect … I joined the ship again at Gravesend, and we proceeded on our voyage, which was pleasant enough till we got out to sea, when we were joined by three more ships. We had almost reached the Downs when the weather became stormy, and we all put back under the North Foreland, and lay there three days. Here I saw some very grand effects of stormy clouds. I came on shore at Deal, walked to Dover, and the next day returned to London. The worst part of the story is that I have lost all my drawings. The ship was such a scene of confusion, when I left her, that although I had done my drawings up very carefully, I left them behind. When I found, on landing, that I had left them, and saw the ship out of reach, I was ready to faint.85

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How the sketch books were recovered is not known. Perhaps they made the trip all the way to China and back, but more likely they were transferred to a homeward-bound ship somewhere like Table Bay in South Africa.86 He was able to use those of the Victory three years later when he decided to paint the Trafalgar picture. Farington noted in his diary on 10 April 1806: “Constable called. He had sent a picture of Ld. Nelson’s engagement to the Exhibition.”87 The Trafalgar shows what Constable might have done with naval subjects, and when he married he chose as his wife Maria, the eldest daughter of Charles Bicknell, the Admiralty Solicitor. Bicknell sought Farington’s support for Constable’s election to the Academy, and was to leave his son-in-law £20,000 on his death, but Constable was careful not to do another naval painting.88 He noted in his diary on 2 July 1824: “There comes a letter from the Gallery to offer prizes for the best sketches and pictures of the Battles of the Nile and Trafalgar; it does not interest me much.”89 Perhaps Constable was distancing himself from the “band of brother” naval artists for psychological reasons. Sir Charles Holmes, in writing his introduction to the 1931 edition of Constable’s letters, wrote that the passage of years now made it possible to publish letters that would have hurt too many had they been published earlier: “It was evident that his many gifts included a very sharp tongue, which in a circle of struggling painters was not likely to make its owner a popular personage.”90 In a letter of 1830, for instance, Constable wrote: “You do me an injustice in supposing I despise poor Bonnington [i.e., Richard Parkes Bonington] – I despise no man – but Collins the Royal Academician. Can you give me a print or two of Bonnington’s? to convince you – that I don’t wholly overlook him but there is a moral feeling in Art as well as everything else – it is not right in a young man to assume great dash – great completion – without study – or pains.”91 It is hard to understand this prissy attitude toward one who during his brief lifetime painted some of the most important marine watercolours made in Britain during the war years. Constable also disparaged one of J.M.W. Turner’s great publishing efforts as “his Liber Stupidorum.”92

 Although the Examiner praised the Death of Nelson pictures by Dighton and Devis, its review of the British Institution exhibition was rather

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guarded. Hunt wrote: “There are no less than thirty Prize Pictures, representing [the] Battles of the Nile and Trafalgar, which collectively are monotonous; but many of them have merit, and about half-a-dozen are admirable. The arrangement, the light, the swell of the water, the accuracy, and the floating of the ships, commend to our praise 256 and 267, by W. Daniell, R.A.; so do the hurly-burly of the battle, and the burning in 233, by S. Drummond, A.R.A.”93 Hunt also noticed the work of Michael William Sharp, who was one of the Norwich school of painters but not a regular in the field of naval painting. He had studied at the Academy school under Sir William Beechey, and in 1818 was a student of John Crome, with whom he was living.94 “Mr. Sharp’s Battle of the Nile, 234, is distinguished for its identity and entire comprehensiveness of circumstance. At night when the L’Orient blew up – ‘The situation of the English ships are according to their respective log books, and the French line is shown from van to rear.’ The strong and expansive light from the ill-fated L’Orient showing all the ships, and gradually receding into the gloomy night, the beautiful and varied colour, careful finishing and arrangement of the ships, and the importance given to the composition by the largeness of the Culloden on the right front of the picture, are among the beauties of this rich picture.” A picture by Alexander Fraser, another newcomer into the field of naval painting, was also mentioned.95 “273, Battle of the Nile, by Mr. Fraser, is not so complete in extent of shipping or circumstances as some of the others; but he has on that account painted more of the turmoil and horror of a naval battle, by concentrating and giving size to a few ships and important incidents. He rivets our feelings by the crashing fall of the masts and rigging, the horror of the poor fellows who are endeavouring to save themselves on a restless and water-immersed mast, the humane efforts of the British sailors to rescue the sinking enemy and the fierce and fiery explosion of their huge Admiral-ship. The execution in this picture is beautiful, and the colour and effect powerful.” But Hunt, like many of his fellow art critics, did not think paintings of ships and gun-smoke should be taken very seriously: “These exhibitions of a part of an extensive naval battle best convey to the mind the ‘confusion worse confounded,’ the crash, the carnage, and the horrors of a great sea-fight. The exhibition of a long line of contending ships, like most of these now exhibited, and in the midst of smoke, are portraits of shipping, rather than the display of the sinewy, fierce, and sanguinary tug of maritime war. On this account, we think them the least

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proper subjects for Prize Pictures, unless they were on a very unusual extent of canvass, so as to admit of detailed representation of the personal conflict of the men in a ship or two, together with a view of the entire shipping.” Many will agree. Certainly it is the human element that makes battle significant, and wide views of battles cannot show much of the human experience. Turner’s 1806–08 Trafalgar, which will be considered in a later chapter, Drummond’s Death of Nelson, and even the portrait history painting of Brown and Copley, have a social importance lacking in most tactical pictures. De Loutherbourg’s battle pictures partake of both elements, the human and the technical, and because of their theatrical qualities succeed. All the same, among the hundreds of pictures of naval evolutions with gun-smoke, there are many that can be valued simply for their painterly qualities. And the resonance of ships and navies to a nation with a degree of salt water in its veins cannot be dismissed. John Thomas Serres, Turner, who was another who visited the Victory on her return to England, Daniell, whose work was liked by Hunt, Clarkson Stanfield, and perhaps George Chambers were all to add their efforts to the numerous pictures of Trafalgar, but consideration of these will have to wait until later chapters. The war was to continue for another ten years, and in 1812 was to see the United States added to Britannia’s foes.

Six T h e Wo r l d Wa r

After Trafalgar, the nature of the war at sea changed. The damage to the French fleet, and the demoralization of the Spanish all but ended the major fleet engagements. The only exception was the action at San Domingo by a squadron under the command of Sir John Duckworth in February 1806. The Royal Navy’s job became part of a wider effort to prevent Napoleon from regaining the ability to challenge Britain at sea. The reputation of the French army remained the dominant force on the European continent, and enabled Napoleon to coerce client states into building new ships, and putting their fleets at the disposal of the French empire. Meeting this danger called for operations against landward positions by fleets equipped with appropriately armed small craft, sometimes with British or allied soldiers embarked. As often as not, the operations were politically and diplomatically sensitive and, given their complexity, not always satisfactory in their outcome. When the scope of the war was widened in 1812 by the American declaration against Britain, the new war was not greeted with any enthusiasm. These developments inevitably had their effect on the work of the artists. Napoleon sought to use his control of the European continent to apply economic pressure on Britain, declaring in his Berlin Decree, in November 1806, the blockade of the British Isles. A year after Trafalgar, there was no question of the blockade being enforced by naval action. A Member of Parliament, John Smith, spoke contemptuously of “a blockade of [i.e., by] a country who had hardly dared to trust a ship out of the protection of their batteries, against a country which commands the seas, and could, if it thought fit, intercept the commerce of the whole world. The arrogance of this threat of blockade could only be equalled by its

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absurdity.”1 To the extent that it was ever effective, the stoppage of trade was left to French customs officers, and to the officials of vassal states. The imposition of the “continental system” was to be one of Napoleon’s greatest mistakes. It caused discontent throughout Europe, especially when it became apparent that the mercantilist management of European trade was intended to benefit the French economy, leaving her client states to pay the price of war with Britain. Enforcement demanded great commitment of manpower, which was nonetheless inadequate to prevent the British from keeping up a healthy smuggled trade. All the same, the danger to Britain was a very real one, and the measures taken to ensure that neutrals did not replace British commerce in European markets, the famous “orders in council,” were to lead to the American declaration in 1812. In the shorter term, cartoonists could simply enjoy the scene with such pieces as Jack Tars conversing with Boney on the Blockade of Old England.2 The confidence of the public is revealed by its shift of interest to domestic affairs. Pitt’s premature death soon after the news of Trafalgar had brought in the opposition to form the derisively named “Ministry of all the Talents.” Lord Melville suddenly acquired a strong support among the public, and he was acquitted at his impeachment trial for misappropriation of funds. Most of the cartoonists followed that change of view, with the exception of Rowlandson. Neither the continental system nor the Melville trial, however, could be used for romantic history painting. In the early months of 1807 the need to counter French influence in eastern Europe led to Vice Admiral Duckworth’s being given orders to take a detachment of the Mediterranean fleet through the Dardanelles in support of the Russians. There was hope that the Turks, who had come to terms with the French against their mutual enemy, could be “persuaded” that their true interests lay with Britain. Admiral Charles Boyle was to tell Farington that “while He commanded the Windsor Castle, in passing through the Dardanelles with 4 other Men of War, where the passage is not more than a quarter of a mile wide, several shot were fired upon them from pieces of Ordnance of a prodigious Calibre. One of these shot hit the Windsor Castle, & lodged in the Mainmast. It was a piece of Granite, made round & smooth & was 800 pounds in weight.”3 But in the days following the passage of the Dardanelles forts, Duckworth had not been able to bring the fleet against the batteries of Con-

[Williams?] Jack Tars conversing with Boney on the Blockade of Old England, bm Catalogue #10623.

stantinople because of the currents in the Bosphorus. His incursion served only to alienate the Turks. A frustrated public was inclined to consider him as lacking in Nelsonic heroism. It was asked why command of the expedition had not been given to Sir Sidney Smith, now a Rear Admiral and Duckworth’s subordinate. Smith’s heroic defence of Acre against General Napoleon Buonaparte, and his established relationship with the Sultan, should have made him the obvious choice. The French defeat of the Russian army at the battle of Friedland, leading to the Treaty of Tilsit on 7 July 1807, renewed the danger that Napoleon would be able to strike at Britain using the fleets of neutral Portugal and Denmark. To forestall this danger, a British fleet was again sent to Copenhagen in August, this time escorting a field army. After besieging and bombarding the city, a convention was concluded surrendering the Danish fleet, which was brought back to English harbours. More fortunate was the salvaging of the Portuguese fleet in December, which was got out of Lisbon hours before the arrival of a French army under Marshal Junot. It was escorted by Sidney Smith to Brazil, where the Portuguese royal family took up residence. Portuguese forces

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became allies of the British, and Spain soon revolted against French domination. In response to the French-imposed trade embargo and Napoleon’s attempt to establish his brother Joseph as their king, juntas throughout Spain took up arms. At the end of August 1808 General Dalrymple, newly arrived from Gibraltar to command British forces in Portugal, concluded a disgraceful convention at Cintra with the French field commander, General Kellermann. The victory at Vimeiro was squandered. Dalrymple even agreed to repatriate Kellerman’s army in British transports, which would be freighted with the loot seized by the French. Within months the French army recrossed the French frontier into Spain. “If the Scoundrall is not shot when he returns,” Sir Thomas Lawrence, the future president of the Royal Academy, wrote indignantly to Farington, “let us be confident that he will be so disgrac’d as to be hooted at whereever he appears.”4 One of the few blessings of the convention was that Admiral Sir Charles Cotton obtained the internment at Portsmouth of the Russian squadron sheltering in the Tagus. The following year, on 11 April 1809, fireships were used to attack the French Brest fleet sheltering in Basque Roads. The inshore operation had been entrusted by the Admiralty to Pocock’s early associate, the excitable Captain the Honourable Thomas Cochrane. This was impolitic because he was not a Channel Fleet commander and was resented as an interloper. A tactical force of fireships had been created, supported by an “explosion ship” packed with powder kegs and grenades. The plan was to blast a way through a protective boom, and set fire to the enemy squadron sheltering in the estuary. The outcome was only partly successful, and aroused intense controversy. Cochrane was not able to place the explosion vessel where it could do any real damage to the enemy. The fireships had more effect. They broke through the boom, and the French in their confusion either ran themselves aground or jettisoned their guns so as to be able to cross the bar into the Charente River. All the same, Cochrane complained that the Channel fleet commander, Admiral Lord Gambier, was slow to enter the estuary to exploit the enemy’s confusion. In the strongly tidal waters, Gambier did well to resist being stampeded by his subordinate, but the unhappy conclusion was that Cochrane threatened to use his seat in parliament to oppose a vote of thanks. Gambier asked for a court martial, in which he was acquitted.

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The bad taste left by the experience was not improved by the fact that Cochrane had received a knighthood for his part in the action before too much of the dirt had come out. Haydon had confided to his journal that Cochrane’s knighthood was for himself a moment of epiphany: “I could not read the ceremony without feeling an envy of his glory. Painters never can expect such honours. How I should have been delighted to [have] been in that battle with him. I am determined I will go out as volunteer one day or other some where, & try if I cannot get some glory in fighting as well as Painting. If I could but signalize myself in battle once before I die, as well as to be a great Painter, how happily shall I resign my existence. I like the Idea of fire, shot, shells, dying groans, tremendous explosions, enthusiastic huzzas, dying efforts, blazing fires, and all the horrors, terrors, fury, rage & smoke of a thundering battle.”5 Poor man, his valiant efforts to believe in his greatness as a painter eventually failed to convince even himself, and he was to end his life with a pistol shot. The Russian squadron was still at Spithead when in the summer of 1809 Haydon and his fellow artist Sir David Wilkie visited the British Channel Fleet anchorage prior to sailing to Plymouth. Enthusiastically, Haydon wrote: There is in our Navy a sublime, terrible simplicity; nothing admitted but what is absolutely useful. The cannon, the decks, & the Sailors wear the appearance of a stern vigour, constituted to resist the elements. No beautiful forms in the gun carriages, no taste or elegance in the cannon, the ports square, & the cannon iron, and the Sailors muscular. Every thing inspired one with awe & admiration. I felt as if I could have stood like a rock on such a deck and braved the fiercest battle. I could have drifted into the fight biting iron, such inspired, energetic vigour did every thing I saw excite in me. There was nothing elegant or tasteful that would excite indolent, luxurious delight; every thing was rough, terrible, & firm, that roused the fiercer passions. There was a grandeur in the sight of 350 Sail at anchor at Spithead, destined for some great enterprise.

Sir Roger Curtis, the Port Admiral, having found accommodation for them in a ship bound for Plymouth, they set off through the moored Russian fleet. “The sailors stared at us. How unlike English Sailors they appeared, their lips covered with nasty, sandy coloured mustachios,

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some in hairy caps, some in green jackets. When they laughed it was like the grins of Jackalls or Apes.”6 The ships gathered at Spithead were part of the force being collected for the attempt later in the year to destroy the fleet Napoleon had ordered built at Antwerp. It was the largest amphibious force Britain had yet sent forth, but the operation was to be a total failure. The navy successfully transported and supported the army commanded by the Earl of Chatham, but he lacked any sort of dash, and turned back before reaching the upper Scheldt. Farington reported the grumbling of several naval officers who “were incensed at Lord Chatham; spoke of his habits there – rising between 12 & one, not receiving officers till 2 o’Clock. All ruined by delay.” Just as well, in de Loutherbourg’s opinion. He had been quite ill the previous year, but now he was up and about, and Farington recorded his view that “if the English Ships go up the Scheldt they will not get back.”7 Flushing was held for some months, but the army of occupation became so seriously affected by Walcheren fever that it had to be withdrawn.

 A twentieth-century war artist would have found ample material in these events. The two passages of the Dardanelles were as gallant actions as any that had inspired artists to earlier efforts, but the frustrating outcome did not make the expedition a matter of national pride. The cartoonists were generally supportive of the action at Copenhagen, with such pieces as Gillray’s British Tars, towing the Danish Fleet into Harbour; the Broadbottom Leviathan trying to swamp Billy’s [i.e., Pitt’s] old-Boat, & the little Corsican tottering on the Clouds of Ambition.8 However, the 1807 Copenhagen operation was even less popular in England than its predecessor of 1801. Protest against the attack on a neutral nation extended to political opposition to the King’s address to Parliament. Russia took the opportunity to declare war on Britain.9 The quarrels of the commanders in the Basque Roads affair should not have detracted from the courage of the men, or the interest of a complicated operation involving fireships, explosion ships, boats, and the fleet itself, all manoeuvring in confined and strongly tidal waters guarded by a boom and forts. The action could have been painted in the same dramatic lights as were shown in so many of the paintings of the battle of the Nile. The Scheldt operation was as complicated as had been Basque

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Roads, but on a much larger scale, and technically interesting. Both the Copenhagen and the Scheldt actions involved spectacular use of the new Congreve rockets, and both tested the seamen and soldiers involved. But the quarrels among the commanders at Basque Roads, the humiliation caused by Chatham’s incompetence, and the indignation felt when Chatham used his place in cabinet to make a personal representation to the king in which he attempted to lay the blame on Admiral Strachan, were as discouraging as had been the moral concern about the attack on Copenhagen. In cutting reference to the use of Congreve rockets in the siege of Flushing, Rowlandson published on 24 September 1809 General Cheathem’s marvellous Return from his Exhibition of Fire Works.10 But there was little incentive to devote time and energy to representation of these unsatisfactory events. The chance that officers, or patriotic citizens, would wish to purchase expensive paintings was not great, and the public was not very likely to spend its pounds for engravings. None of the great history painters – West, de Loutherbourg, Copley, or Brown – felt moved to undertake a picture. Indeed, the public may have been right to feel so little interest in what were perceived as the navy’s redundant efforts to prevent Napoleon from reconstructing his fleet. Farington, dining at Admiral Gardner’s at Combe Hill, Greenwich, in July 1810, was told that, although Napoleon “had all the Ports on the Continent & might build ships yet [he] could not make sailors, adding, ‘Sailors cannot be made by working on Canals, or by Close Coasting,’ and added, that He did not fear any number of ships manned with men so formed to be Sailors. He said He had so little apprehension of what men might be made by being in vessels only employed in Close Coasting, that He would not molest them.”11 Farington, by the way, had been invited by Boydell to dinner in March 1809 to meet Emma Hamilton, and he recorded in his diary the juicy tidbit that the child Lord Nelson had left in her care was certainly their own.12

 Even the specialist marine painters were careful about their commitment to these subjects, but Pocock identified himself so closely with the navy that he turned to work on them. The publication in 1804 of William Falconer’s poem “The Shipwreck” in a new edition with illustrations by Pocock might suggest that he was moving away from the role of war artist.13 Falconer had himself been a seaman and based his poem on his

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own experience. Pocock’s work, however, continued to be influenced more by nature, by the observation of ships at sea, than by the world of ideas. After first sketching a plot of the ships’ positions for Duckworth’s 1806 action at San Domingo, he painted a picture in oils, using a quarterdeck perspective.14 Although the outcome of the action at the Dardanelles was far from encouraging, the sailors had overcome tremendous obstacles, and Pocock drew a Plan of Duckworth’s Fleet off the mouth of the Dardanelles, 19 February–3 March 1807.15 Between 1806 and 1810 Pocock exhibited twenty-five pictures at the British Institution.16 In 1807 he painted a picture that is regarded as his greatest masterpiece, somewhat sweepingly entitled Nelson’s Flagships. His composition shows Agamemnon, which was Nelson’s early command but not a flagship, Vanguard, Elephant, Captain, and Victory at anchor together in a glassy calm with their sails unfurled to dry. For this picture he returned to the shipboard perspective. James Fittler made an engraving from this painting.17 Pocock also had the satisfaction of seeing his son Isaac progressing in the world of the arts. In December 1807 Isaac Pocock was awarded the first £100 guineas prize offered by the British Institution for the best copy painting by a student working in the British Gallery.18 Constable told Farington at the beginning of December 1807 that “Pocock” had chaired the proceedings on November 23 when students of the British Institution held a dinner at the Thatched House Tavern. The elder Pocock was a keen party man, but in this instance it must have been his son Isaac who was in the chair. Two weeks later he happened by while Farington was meeting with West: “Pocock came in for a quarter of an Hour while we were in conversation. West told Him that He might expect a favourable decision on his Historical picture for a premium at the British Institution. After Pocock left us West spoke highly of his behaviour as Chairman when the Students of the British Institution dined together lately at the Thatched House Tavern. He S[ai]d the Duke of Norfolk c[oul]d not have acquitted Himself better.” It may not be reading too much into the evidence to feel that Isaac Pocock was applying wardroom table manners learned from his father to a student gathering; there is just a whiff of gunpowder and salt water. And it is not impossible that the impression Isaac’s performance as chairman had made on West tipped the balance in favour of a picture which Sir Thomas Lawrence thought very “indifferent.”19

Nicholas Pocock, Nelson’s Flagships, oil, 14⬙ ⫻ 21½⬙, signed and dated 1807. © nmm bhc 1096.

Another artist who took up the theme of the Dardanelles expedition was Thomas Whitcombe. His The squadron under the command of Sir J.T. Duckworth forcing the narrow channel of the Dardanelles, February 19th 1807 now hangs unseen in the Boardroom of the old Admiralty building. Prints of it, and of his Destruction of the Turkish Fleet, February 19th 1807, are in the National Maritime Museum.20 The National Maritime Museum has preserved few images from the action at Copenhagen, but none of them are painted in oils by a leading artist. The most important naval picture is a rather too carefully posed watercolour of Admiral Gambier’s Action off Copenhagen, 1807 by Buttersworth, painted about six years after the event.21 The action ashore, however, was witnessed and recorded by a very considerable artist. Captain James Pattison Cockburn had been born in March 1779 and on 19 March 1793, at the age of fourteen, he entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, as a cadet. He was commissioned lieutenant in the Royal Artillery on 6 March 1795, and captain in 1804 after service in Africa and the East.22 At Woolwich he would have studied landscape painting under Paul Sandby, and he was to become a very

Thomas Whitcombe, The squadron under the command of Sir J.T. Duckworth forcing the narrow channel of the Dardanelles, February 19th 1807, oil, 21⬙ ⫻ 30⬙, © nmm bhc 0575.

Hand-coloured aquatint engraved by Robert Pollard and Joseph Constantine Stadler after Captain James Pattison Cockburn, The Siege of Copenhagen. Plate 1 ... the English Fleet & Transports preparatory to & during the Bombardment of the Windmill Battery & the Village of Fredericsberg, published by Boydell & Co., 2 November 1807, 413 ⫻ 522mm, © nmm pah 8059.

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accomplished artist, but he remained in the army until he reached the rank of Major-General. Boydell and Co. published a series of plates from his pictures. These are surprisingly pastoral, considering the violence of the bombardment. Of naval interest is a distant view of the boat action with Danish gunboats, and a view of the fleet of transports moored between Kronborg and Elsinborg castles.23 Two other coloured etchings by unknown hands, showing the siege and the surrender of the fleet, were published by W. Faden and John Fairburn.24 One subject that could be undertaken without leaving England was the arrival at Portsmouth of Danish prizes surrendered after the bombardment of Copenhagen. Pocock and Richard Livesay, now drawing master at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth, are thought to have collaborated on a pen, ink, and watercolour sketch of The Justitia captured at Copenhagen 1807.25 And John Christian Schetky, who was to succeed to Livesay’s post, was also to paint a very attractive sketch of a Danish prize, the Odin.26 The most important painting from the 1807 Copenhagen campaign is a picture of the prize ships by J.M.W. Turner, although in his finished work he obscured the fact, presumably because he feared he would not find a market for an unpopular subject.27 Almost immediately after the action at Basque Roads, J. Pitts published a coloured etching of The Destruction of the French Fleet in Basque Roads – April 12th 1809.28 But the public soon had its enthusiasm dampened by the bitterness between the commanders, and the only other image of this subject in the National Maritime Museum is an aquatint and etched print by Thomas Sutherland based on a painting by Whitcombe. This was not published until after the war, in 1817, when it was immediately republished by James Jenkins as part of his great series of The Naval Achievements of Great Britain from the Year 1793 to 1817, for which Whitcombe provided fifty-four of the fifty-five pictures.29 As a poor apology for the failure of any of the great artists to create an image of the Scheldt expedition, Edward Orme published a coloured aquatint by James Pattison Cockburn of a Pictorial Plan of the Grand Expedition, in the West Scheldt, August 1809, shewing the difficulty of approaching to Antwerp. To serve his didactic purpose, Cockburn adopted an oblique bird’s eye view, with results that were less effective artistically than had been his attractive pictures of the Copenhagen operation.30 It isn’t know whether he was in the Scheldt operation in any official capacity, but another Cockburn was. Captain Sir George Cockburn, Royal

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Navy, had served with Nelson in the Mediterranean and risen through merit to command part of the naval forces in the Scheldt, he was mentioned in Admiral Strachan’s dispatches for his part in landing units of the army. The kinship between the two Cockburns has not been established, but may be inferred. James Pattison was to be given command of the 5th Company of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Artillery stationed at Woolwich on 6 July 1816, and retained the command until the unit was reduced 1 February 1819.31 Henry Aston Barker may have been the only prominent British artist who painted a picture of the Scheldt operations. He published a handcoloured print after one of his drawings, of the siege of Flushing, from shorewards, the fleet only glimpsed through dense clouds of smoke.32 It isn’t known whether he was there at the time of the action, but it would have been in his character. An unknown artist also did a pen and ink sketch of Forcing the Mouth of the Scheldt 14 August 1809.33 Viewed from the other side, the Dutchman J. en Groenewoud published a set of dramatic aquatints of the operation.34

 The only identifiable naval subject that John Sell Cotman painted has a connection with the 1807 Copenhagen operation. Considering Cotman’s love of the sea, and the importance of his marine painting, it is surprising that he painted so few naval pictures. Born in Norwich in 1782, Cotman lived most of his life in East Anglia. His father, a barber, had consulted the portrait painter John Opie about the prospects for his son as an artist. Opie had himself been “discovered” working as a mine-carpenter’s apprentice by John Wolcot, who recognized his talents, and he had done rather well for himself. But Opie reportedly replied to Cotman’s father: “Let him rather black boots than follow the profession of an artist.” Nevertheless, young Cotman began his studies at the Royal Academy in 1798, supporting himself at first by working for Ackermann at his Repository of the Arts colouring aquatints, and then finding a home with Dr Monro in the footsteps of Thomas Girtin and J.M.W. Turner, who had earlier been protégés of the doctor. In 1800 Cotman was awarded by the Society of Arts its prize of “the great silver palette,” and he exhibited for the first time in the Royal Academy. His principal early artistic influence was Girtin, but he seems

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also to have learned from John Varley, another leading watercolourist, something of the experimental ways of applying watercolour that Turner was developing. In 1802 Cotman found a patron in Francis Cholmeley of Brandsby Hall north of York. He was to spend three wonderfully productive summers teaching the Cholmeley family, and sketching. In 1804 he found another patron in Dawson Turner, a successful banker from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Dawson Turner was no relation to J.M.W. Turner, but he did know him, and in later years regularly sent him gifts of barrels of herrings. In 1805 Cotman spent six happy weeks with John and Mrs Morrit at Rokeby Park, where he painted some of his best pictures, including his Greta Bridge. But Cotman was not able to turn this early recognition by a few sympathetic patrons into a secure position in the world of the arts. He was rejected by the Society of Painters in WaterColours in 1806, and fled from his London home to Norwich. There he opened a “School for Drawing and Design,” and exhibited in the Norwich Society of Artists. But his isolation from the artistic community in the capital was to deny him the recognition he deserved. His life was to be dominated by the need to work hard for very small return, as a teacher and as an engraver. Cotman exhibited his only identifiable naval picture, The Mars riding at anchor off Cromer, at the Norwich Society of Artists in 1808.35 Mars, of 74 guns, was commanded by William Larkin, who knew the coastline well as he was heir to Felbrigg House close to Cromer. On 31 July 1807, shortly before sailing for Denmark, he found a lee off Cromer in squally weather. The village of Felbrigg was the home of Ann Miles, Cotman’s future wife. Cotman’s biographer, Sydney Kitson, somewhat archly suggests that “it was while under the emotional stress of the early days of their mutual devotion that Cotman conceived that great drawing.”36 The only detail in the picture is in the small craft in the foreground on the beach. The Mars is a wash silhouette. R.W. Ketton-Cremer has pointed out that a ship of the line could not have been moored so close to the shelving shore with safety, and discovered from the Mars’s master’s log that she had in fact been moored east of Cromer.37 It also appears, surprisingly, that the Mars’s stern is somewhat out of drawing. But the straight-up, flat but vital and frame-filling composition, with a wide horizon set at a level on the paper to show a surprising amount of

Williams, engraver, after Henry Aston Barker, Flushing during the Siege taken from the Knole House Dyke, 1809, aquatint and etching, coloured, 226 ⫻ 590mm, published by T. Patser, 6 February 1810, bm 1867.2.9.1623.

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Horatio Beevor Love, John Sell Cotman, pencil and wash, 1830, npg 1372.

sky, is Cotman at his best. At Copenhagen, Mars was put in charge of refitting the Danish ship Fyen and escorting her back to England. Another, possibly naval, Cotman subject from the same year is a lively watercolour of A Dismasted Brig under forecourse alone, the mizzen having broken off about six feet above the deck. The sky and the pitch of the sea are beautifully observed and expressed by alternating planes of blue and green colours with some lights recovered through the use of a scraper.38

 If there was little public demand for pictures of the unsatisfactory littoral battles in the years following Trafalgar, there was still a need for the artists of naval victory to feed their families, and still an interest on

John Sell Cotman, The Mars riding at anchor off Cromer, 1808, watercolour, 12⬙ ⫻ 8⅝⬙, Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, nwhcm 1947.217.139.

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the part of the navy and the nation in pictures of minor operations of war. In meeting this demand, publishers increasing sought the authority of eye witnesses to provide technical advice for the artist. An example was the visual record of a naval engagement involving Captain Jahleel Brenton. Brenton had been captured in July 1803 when he had the misfortune to put his command, the frigate Minerva, ashore under the guns of Cherbourg. In December 1806 he was exchanged for a nephew of Marshal Masséna, who had been captured at Trafalgar, and in on 3 May 1810 he took his new ship, hms Spartan, into action against a French squadron in the Bay of Naples. A pair of prints of the battle were engraved by J. Baily and published by George Andrew’s Marine Print Warehouse; this time, however, Thomas Whitcombe was employed to make the drawings. The resultant pictures were of a markedly higher quality in composition and detail than had been his own weak efforts to represent the battles of Cape St Vincent and Algeciras.39 Perhaps by then Captain Brenton had accepted that he was a better naval commander than he was an artist, or perhaps the severe wound he had received in the hip at Naples, or an earlier head wound from a falling block, had discouraged art work. The failure of the agents for his prizes left him as much in need of the money as he had been at the beginning of the war, so this time there was no suggestion that profits would be devoted to the needs of injured men and widows of those killed. After the war, Captain Brenton was to be made commander at the Cape of Good Hope.40 Captain George Tobin was still painting pictures of his experiences in the Western Atlantic, and his ships were scenes of artistic activity, not only on the quarterdeck but also before the mast. Two months after Tobin was posted captain of the Princess Charlotte in September 1805, Robert Strickland Thomas, who was to become an important naval artist in the postwar period, was entered on her books as an able seaman. This was his first ship, and he served in her from 8 November 1805 to 24 March 1807. Later promoted Acting Lieutenant, Thomas was invalided out of the navy in 1815 after he lost his hearing while serving on the Coast of Africa. He does not figure greatly amongst the artists of naval victory only because, for all but a few of his surviving pictures, he took as his subject views of the postwar navy. He apparently preferred to work from life, but the one wartime naval picture by Lieutenant Thomas possessed by the National Maritime Museum is a striking painting of the wreck of hms Hero on the Texel in 1811, at which time Thomas was serving as a midshipman in hms Brisk on the Irish station.41

William Daniell after Captain Christopher Cole, View of the Island of Banda Neira, E Long. 4.50, Captured by force landed from a squadron under the Command of Captain Cole in the Morning of the August 9th, 1810, aquatint, 434 ⫻ 580mm, published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 16 October 1811, bm 1917.12.8.4597.

In 1807 William Daniell was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and a few years later he turned his hand again to a naval subject from the Eastern theatre. He based his especially attractive coloured aquatint View of the Island of Banda-Neira … Captured by a force landed from a squadron under the Command of Captain Cole in the morning of the 9th August 1810 on a drawing by Captain Cole, who had taken the strongly fortified Dutch colony by storm with only 180 men against a garrison of 400. Cole had been sent home carrying the dispatch announcing the capture of Batavia. He was presented with a gold medal by the Admiralty for the action, and in May 1812 with a sword by his former crew. The engraving was accompanied by a chart of the island and a description, and the price asked was one guinea.42

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Another satisfactory action from the eastern waters which was graphically recorded was the capture of the Isle de France, Mauritius, at the end of 1810. The National Maritime Museum possesses a lovely set of pictures from the campaign drawn by R. Temple and aquatinted by John Heaviside Clark, known as “Waterloo Clark” because he went to the battlefield immediately after the dust had settled.43 Clark also painted marine subjects, and was a progressive business man. Interest in naval affairs was stimulated by the publication in 1809 of Clarke and M’Arthur’s biography of Nelson, complete with plates based on pictures by Pocock and West. Although modern historians are somewhat sniffy about this book, M’Arthur was a serious historian. The book was an important early example of historiography closely based on documentation. It made a great impression on Robert Haydon when he read it in 1812. The picture it painted for him of Nelson was that “with all the simplicity and enthusiasm of a fiery Youth, he had all the wisdom & experience of suspicious age. He had the power of all great men of making others in his presence & society forget their own inferiority, of reconciling them with themselves & himself.” “All loved him.”44 Haydon, with his regrets for the military career he imagined for himself, was greatly moved. In the later years of the war the cartoonists found few naval subjects to interest them, and in any case Gillray ceased to be able to work due to the onset of insanity in 1811, while Isaac Cruikshank died the same year. The American declaration of war in 1812 did not weigh very heavily in the public mind when there were greater threats from the European continent – and greater relief when it became evident that Napoleon had come seriously to grief in Russia. However, public satisfaction at the burning of Washington in September, in retaliation for the burning of York/Toronto, led Cruikshank’s son George to draw a cartoon of John Bull making a Capital Bonfire & Mr. Madison running away in the light of It!!. Williams also contributed The Fall of Washington – or Maddy in full flight. The American attempt to destroy hms Ramillies by hiding a clockwork timer and explosives in a sloop that was allowed to be captured, inspired William Elmes to draw a cartoon. In The Yankey Torpedo he cheered his countrymen with the thought: “Blow my hull up indeed – you may kiss my taffrail!”45 He was a relatively new cartoonist who had contributed a view of Waterford Harbour at the Royal Academy in 1797 but began to publish cartoons in 1811.

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John Heaviside Clark after R. Temple, artist, Isle of France No. 1. View from the Deck of the Upton Castle Transport, of the British Army Landing, coloured aquatint, published by W. Haines in April 1813, 271 ⫻ 390mm, © nmm paf 4779.

A public sated with easy victories over demoralized navies found some interest in actions with Americans, who sometimes overwhelmed their British foes and captured their ships. It was a comfort that “Cousin Jonathan” had sprung from the loins of John Bull. The Americans proved singularly successful in single-ship frigate actions, largely because their super-frigates were “razé 74s,” built with hulls originally intended for 74-gun ships. These frigate actions inspired a number of paintings and prints. One action that did not go in the American favour was that between hms Shannon and uss Chesapeake. Chesapeake was not one of the razé 74s; Shannon’s captain, Sir Philip Broke, was the Royal Navy’s greatest gunnery expert; and the American ship pulled down her flag in fifteen minutes. Inevitably, this was to be made the subject of many paintings, and prints. The East Suffolk Hospital commissioned Samuel Lane, a portrait painter who had studied under Farington, to paint Brooke’s portrait. Farington went to see the picture before it was exhibited at the

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Academy in 1814, and recorded Sir Philip’s misgivings: “Lane introduced the American Colours in the front of the picture lying on the ground under English colours, Sir Philip modestly expressed a doubt whether that w[oul]d not appear ostentatious. – He is much devoted to His profession, & when recovered from His wounds means to serve again.”46 The action between the Shannon and the Chesapeake was also painted by Buttersworth, and was to be one of the most successful of John Christian Schetky’s subjects, but not until long after the end of the war.47 The next year Buttersworth painted two pictures of the battle between hms Endymion and uss President, which took place on 16 January 1815 and ended in the capture of the American ship.48 Lieutenant Ormond, of the Endymion, provided Buttersworth with technical support. Thomas Sutherland was active in supplying the public with prints based on eye witness accounts. He engraved a picture of the capture of the French frigate Rivoli, 22 February 1812, based on a sketch by Captain John William Andrew.49 uss Argus was captured on 14 August 1813 by Commander J.F. Maples and the crew of hms Pelican. Sutherland collaborated with Thomas Whitcombe to produce a coloured aquatint of the action, which was claimed to be based on “a painting in the possession of Captain Maples.” The presumption is that Maples made the original sketches from which Whitcombe worked.50 The Argus, of which William Daniell also painted a picture, had been raiding shipping in the Bristol Channel, and was believed to be hiring replacement crew from the villages along the coast. Following the final defeat of Napoleon, Sutherland published an engraving, Representation of the gallant attack made by the Renaldo, Captain Anderson, and the Redpole, Captain C. Campbell, on a division of the enemy’s flotilla in Boulogne Bay, 3 September 1811, which was based on a sketch by W.A. Armstrong, Master of the Rinaldo.51 This use of officers who had been present at the action to advise professional artists was continued by Ackermann, who published a series of prints of naval subjects following the end of the war. One of the artists of naval victory was to emigrate to present-day Canada. Although John Elliott Woolford did not arrive in Nova Scotia until after the war, nonetheless, his pictures are of great value in establishing the topographical detail of the country. Lord Dalhousie and his brothers had extended their patronage to Woolford after he left the army and set out to be a professional artist. He was a founding member of an Edinburgh Society of Artists, which was formed at a meeting

Thomas Buttersworth, artist, H.M.S. Endymion and U.S.S. President 16 January 1815, engraved by J. Jeakes and published by J. Burr and G. Ballisat, Gracechurch Street, London, 1 June 1815. bm 1940.12.14.90-1.

at Poole’s Coffee House on 1 April 1808 and for four years held annual group shows, the first of which was held at Core’s Lyceum. Alexander Nasmyth, his son Patrick, and Sir Henry Raeburn became members, and in 1809 the exhibition was moved to 16 York Place, near Raeburn’s studio at number 32, and Alexander Nasmyth’s at number 47. In 1808 Woolford had moved to number 1 Dublin Street, just around the corner in the northern extension of Edinburgh New Town. In the 1809 show he exhibited several of his Mediterranean pictures, including number 200, The Le Tigre frigate under the command of Sir Sidney Smith coming to an anchor in the bay of Marmorice, and number 201, The British Fleet, with the troops under the command of the late Sir R. Abercromby, leaving the Bay of Marmorice previous to their descent on Egypt. The main focus of his exhibitions, however, was on topographical paintings of Scottish scenes. The Society had opened the first life-drawing class in Edinburgh, using male models exclusively, but Woolford only occasionally extended himself in the direction of figure pictures.52 During this period he tried his hand at selling engravings of

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his pictures, four of which were published by Vernon and Hood in 1805 and 1806.53 Evidently Woolford did not prosper, and apparently neither did many of his colleagues. In 1810 he was elected to the governing committee of the Society, and the next year it was resolved to distribute all but £500 of its assets amongst the members, who each received £25. This led to a revolt in which the Raeburn faction ousted the Society president, George Watson, and put Raeburn in his place. Nevertheless, in 1812 there was another distribution of £12 to members, and in 1813 the sinking fund was divided up, giving a final distribution of £24/1/7½. At the last meeting on 15 June 1813 it was resolved to look for a purchaser for the building used by the life class, and for the green cloth used in the exhibitions. By that date Woolford had left Dublin Street. For two years he lived on Princess Street, perhaps over a shop. The south exposure would not have been convenient.54 Then in 1813 he moved again to the edge of town at North Logie Green. He continued to use his Princess Street address in the sale catalogue, which suggests he kept on his studio but moved his home. In 1815 Woolford appears to have moved to London, sending in two pictures to the Royal Academy from Tichbourne Street.55 But apparently he did not prosper in London any more than he had in Edinburgh, and he was ready to consider another career change when Dalhousie returned from active service the following year. Having fought in Walcheren, the Peninsula, and France, and reached the rank of general, Dalhousie was appointed Lieutenant-Governor and Commanderin-Chief of Nova Scotia. Woolford decided to accompany him and later claimed to have been appointed in 1817 as clerk in the Barrack Department at Halifax, but he was not entered into the pay books. He described himself in an advertisement he put into the Acadian Recorder on 26 June 1819 as Dalhousie’s “draughtsman.” Dalhousie used the same term when referring to Woolford in his journal.56 Woolford painted over 200 views and maps of Nova Scotia in his first two years. Apart from the topographical pictures which are an important source for the history of colonial British North America, he painted several pictures, of warships in Halifax Harbour. He engraved four of the landscapes himself, the first wrapped engravings to be published in Canada, and it was these which were advertised for sale in 1819 by Mr James H. Donaldson, No. 9, Granville Street, Halifax.57 By that date, Woolford was in Lower Canada, having accompanied Dalhousie

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and his wife on a tour that took them as far as Niagara Falls. On 3 July Dalhousie noted in his journal that Woolford would “be kept hard at work during my rambles in Canada, so that hereafter I may refer to his sketches for the beauties of the Country.” Four days later, when impressed by a view of Coteau du Lac above Vaudreuil at sunset, he “made Woolford try to sketch it.” But, he added, “I fear he is not equal to it.”58 Woolford’s sketchbook for this trip, beginning with pictures of Quebec City, are in the collection of the National Archives of Canada.59 Dalhousie succeeded to the government of Canada in 1820, and Woolford followed him, accompanying him in 1821 on a tour of the Great Lakes that extended as far as Lake Superior. 60 During this trip he sketched Kingston dockyard, which had been established in the wilderness and provided with a skilled labour force brought from England to New Brunswick, and then marched up the St John River.61 After enduring terrible hardship on the way, the shipwrights and riggers had put into frame at Kingston a first-rate line of battleship, the St. Lawrence. Even though it was never launched, the St. Lawrence had established British command of Lake Ontario. Woolford’s sketch shows her still on the ways six years after the end of the war, protected by the redoubt at Fort Henry.62 Woolford then returned to the Maritimes. His obituary says that “in 1823, on a change being made in the Barrack Department, he received his late appointment to this garrison, and held it up to 1858.” In his memoir Woolford wrote that he was “nominated by the then Governor Lieutenant-General Sir James Kempt as Barrack Master at St. John and confirmed in the appointment by the Governor General” the Earl of Dalhousie. The pay records for Saint John make it clear that there was no barrack master there, and that the work was performed by its Deputy Store Keeper, but Woolford might have been there nonetheless. According to the Ordnance Department’s “Foreign Establishment” returns, Woolford was made Barrack Master at Fredericton, the colonial capital on 23 November 1821, and was transferred to the Ordnance Department for his pay on 25 December 1822.63 He was to remain in Fredericton for forty-four years, building a house that still stands on Churchill Row, although a second floor has been added. In 1860 he petitioned the 10th Earl of Dalhousie for some sort of support for his old age.64 His wife, Margaret Woolford, died in 1833, and there were no children. Fortuitously, Woolford’s appointment to Fredericton had occurred a year before that of his in-law Sir Howard Douglas as Lieutenant-Governor.

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John Elliott Woolford, Kingston Dockyard – Fort Henry c. 1819–21, ngc 23423.

This family connection, which may well have been a warm one as Sir Howard was a popular man, enabled Woolford to develop in the arts from a painter to an architect. In 1825, following a fire that burned down the old vice-regal residence, his design was accepted for a new, stone-built, Government House. And in 1828 his design, with modifications, was accepted for King’s College, later the University of New Brunswick. In possibly his last letter to his old patron, the 9th Earl of Dalhousie, Woolford wrote on 24 July 1828: “Your Lordship perhaps will not be displeased to hear that my studies in the Art I have ever been so fond of has not been relaxed and from among twelve competitors my architectural plans for a Public College and a Government House were both approved of and the buildings now nearly complete. Those designs with some other paintings I hope your Lordship will allow me to forward to you.”65

 Some of the work of the artists of naval victory was associated with no particular event. At the National Maritime Museum, for instance, are a number of drawings by John Augustus Atkinson simply of seamen at work. Atkinson was born in 1775 in London, but had grown up and learned

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his trade in St Petersburg, where he gained the patronage of Czarina Catherine and Czar Paul. Returning to London in 1801, he exhibited his first picture at the Academy the following year. Although he did not work extensively with naval subjects, in 1807 he published A Picturesque Representation in One Hundred Coloured Plates, of the Naval, Military, and Miscellaneous Costumes of Great Britain. Rowlandson continued to take a more lighthearted approach to the wooden world. The National Maritime Museum has in its keeping a set of Rowlandson caricatures of naval personnel. These fall into a category of “generalized portraits” without any viciousness in their mood. They illustrate the social life of very ordinary people, to whom he has managed to impart a sense of individuality. A peg-legged cook, an overweight and scruffy purser, topmen, and officers all received the Rowlandson treatment.66 Another of his naval drawings shows a press gang dragging a sailor away from his wife.67 Rowlandson and the French-born Augustus Pugin, who had immigrated to London in 1798 and was employed making architectural drawings for John Nash, collaborated on a drawing of the board room of the Admiralty. This was made into an aquatint by Hill and published by Ackermann on 1 January 1808.68 Rowlandson’s prolific output includes a whimsical drawing from 1815 of a gentleman getting into difficulties while trying to board a man of war, with a boatload of ladies and gentlemen waiting their turn on the ladder.69 It was in 1809 that Ackermann first began to publish the Rowlandson lampoons of William Gilpin in his Poetical Magazine which, when supplied with verses by William Combe, were republished in 1812 in book form as Dr. Syntax in pursuit of the Picturesque. Ackermann’s patronage of Rowlandson, and of William Combe, was as creative as it was philanthropic. Combe had accompanied Laurence Sterne on his “Sentimental Journey,” inherited a fortune which he lost in high living, and, after trying every walk of life from soldier to underwaiter, had settled down to a literary career with a government pension. With the death of Pitt, the pension had been stopped, and Combe accepted Ackermann’s commission, working mostly from within the “the Rules of the King’s Bench,” where his creditors had had him confined. The collaborative method was unusual. Rowlandson made the drawings first, and Combe wrote suitable verse to accompany them. Dr. Syntax was to be followed in 1820 by The Second Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of Consolation, and in 1821 by The Third Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of a Wife.

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A melancholy subject that attracted several artists was the line of prison hulks in Portsmouth Harbour. One very attractive oil on wood panel of the subject was painted by a prisoner of war, Ambrose Louise Garneray.70 Two other, lesser, efforts were painted by an artist who did not sign his work but may have been Daniel Turner, an engraver and painter best known for his painting of the Thames and its bridges.71 The Maritime Museum possesses two oils of his of Nelson’s funeral procession as it passed up the Thames.72 Samuel Prout, a painter, W.H. Harriott, and George Cooke, an engraver, all contributed to another striking picture of the prison hulks – a real instance of artistic incest.73 Cooke’s son Edward William was to return to the theme, and Clarkson Stanfield, a family friend, adopted the idea in turn. A line of descent has even been traced out as far as J.M.W. Turner’s Fighting Téméraire. Most of the examples in the National Maritime Museum of work by Samuel Atkins have not been identified with any particular event. Little is known about Atkins except that he exhibited eighteen paintings at the Royal Academy between 1787 and 1808, and was probably at sea sometime in the 1790s, when he may have visited the West Indies and China. A pleasing example of his work is a small watercolour drawing entitled Under Repair – An East Indiaman Drawn up for Repairs.74 A picture of a Frigate Action has not been given a more precise identification.75 In the National Maritime Museum there is a beautiful pair of studies of capstans and anchors in watercolour by one of its masters, William Payne.76 Born on 4 March 1760 the son of a prosperous hop and coal merchant in Westminster, Payne had grown up on Park Street in the Grosvenor Estates, where he had learned to mingle with the wealthy. In April 1778 he was appointed draughtsman 5th class at the Board of Ordnance drawing office in the Tower of London. There is no truth in the belief that he was employed in Plymouth dockyard, but the Ordnance Department sent him at the end of 1782 to Plymouth, where the fortifications were being developed following the invasion scare of 1779. He was paid £16/2/– per quarter to do drafting work, and while there he painted several watercolours of Plymouth dockyard from Mount Edgcumbe and Empacombe, and married Jane Goodridge. On leaving the Ordnance service in 1787 he became a successful drawing master.77 As Payne matured he was to contribute considerably to the development of watercolour as a technique, even giving his name to a shade of grey paint. In 1809 he was elected an associate of the New Society of

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Samuel Atkins, Under Repair – An East Indiaman Drawn up for Repairs, watercolour 102 ⫻ 304mm, © nmm pad 8941.

Painters in Miniature and Watercolour, but he left on its reorganization in 1812. The wonderfully descriptive studies of anchors and capstans were dated in Dover that year, but for some reason he did not continue to paint pictures of naval subjects. He was to die in August 1830.78

 Napoleon’s defeat and exile to Elba was of an entirely higher order of importance than were frigate actions, but it was only incidentally a naval event. The Naval Chronicle recorded it with two engravings of Napoleon’s embarkation for Elba at St Raphael, and subsequent landing at Porto Ferraio, based on drawings by a Lieutenant George Sidney Smith.79 Earlier in the year he had served in Hibernia, on which Sir William Sidney Smith, now a Vice Admiral, was flying his flag and which was commanded by Captain G.J. Smith, so a family connection is virtually certain. He had been transferred to the Undaunted on 10 April 1814, and at St Raphael on 27 April, Undaunted received on board Napoleon and his baggage. Lieutenant Smith was obviously a witness to the proceeding, but it is less clear whether he witnessed Napoleon’s landing at Porto Ferraio. According to Undaunted’s log, on May third Smith had been landed at Capria to take charge of the island, and there is no record at all of his rejoining his ship. But, as there is no record of Smith being left behind, it might be presumed that his business ashore at Capria had not taken long. On May fourth Undaunted reached Elba: “Moored 2/3 of

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[a] cable each way near the mole Head, furl’d sail, Hoisted out the Boats & employed sending the Packages etc. belonging to the Emperor Napoleon on shore. At 2 P.M. the Garrison saluted which we returned – at 3 the Emperor Napoleon left the ships under a Salute of 24 Guns … at 4 Saluted with 21 Guns on the Emperor Napoleon passing the ship.”80 Napoleon’s “Hundred Days” in 1815, which ended in the defeat of the French army at Waterloo, moved Haydon to elegy. In his diary he exulted: Have not the efforts of the British Nation been gigantic? Think of her Naval Victories – St. Jean [d’Acre], St. Vincent, Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, then of Vimeiro, Talavera, Fuentes D’honoro [i.e., On˘oro], Salamanca, Vittoria, Orthes, Pyrenees. Think of her treasure in coalescing Europe, & now again this battle of La belle Alliance [Waterloo] compelling all. Think of her Glories in India, and her subduing all the Colonies of the World. To such Glories She wants but the glories of my noble Art to make her the grandest Nation in the World, and this she shall have if God spare my life. Grant it, Amen.81

The naval aspects of the last campaign, however, were not remarkable. Britannia’s rule of the waves was not challenged. Napoleon’s abdication, his surrender to hms Bellerophon, and his appeal to the Prince Regent for refuge, brought the navy back into the picture. “Prinny” refused, and Napoleon was transported on board hms Northumberland to imprisonment on St Helena. The sensational events were a bonanza for the cartoonists.82 And the subject was also of interest to more conventional artists. It was Richard Westall who brought the news of Napoleon’s surrender to Farington on 21 July 1815.83 George Tobin, who had gone on the half-pay list in 1814, painted a picture of Bonaparte in Torbay, at Anchor, on board His Majesty’s Ship Bellerophon, Captain F.L. Maitland, July 24, 1815, Previous to his Sailing for St. Helena. This was engraved and published by Edward Orme.84 Another Orme aquatint is A View of Sugar Loaf Point, St. Helena, published on November first 1815.85 A midshipman in Northumberland, Andrew Motz Skene, painted a sketch of Napoleon with his warder, which is now part of the collection in the British Museum.86 He had first gone to sea in January 1808 as a volunteer 1st class in hms Guierrere commanded by Alexander Skene, who probably was his father.87



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Edward Orme after Captain George Tobin, Bonaparte in Torbay, at Anchor, on board His Majesty’s Ship Bellerophon, Captain F.L. Maitland, July 24, 1815, Previous to his Sailing for St. Helena, coloured aquatint, 304 ⫻ 405mm, © nmm paf 7978.

The Georgian world did not think it necessary to raise any monuments to the thousands of sailors and marines who had suffered through the long years of the war, except when they were associated with one of the great victories. But the final defeat of Napoleon brought a flurry of shows. The Sadler’s Wells Theatre staged a theatrical extravaganza of the battle of the Nile, performed, as it was stated in a rather splendid wood-cut theatre bill, “on real water.”88 Another model sea battle was performed on the Serpentine Pond in Hyde Park. The erection of monuments to Nelson had begun very shortly after his death. The plan by Nelson’s prize agent, Alexander Davison, to build

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a “grand Naval Pillar in honour of Lord Nelson,” paid for by subscription, failed, and the £4–5,000 already collected was returned to the donors.89 But in August 1810 Mr. Gilman, the Secretary of the Committee of Taste and of the British Institution, let it be known that proposals were being invited for monuments for admirals Rodney and Collingwood.90 Not all of the monuments were well received. In April 1811 the Examiner announced that it would be publishing an account of the Guildhall monument to Nelson, but a few days later Robert Hunt wrote castigating the city government for its poor taste: “I regret that its judgment in art has been in this instance so unworthy of the generosity of its feelings. Before seeing the monument, and falsely supposing that the City could not fail of raising one to so celebrated an individual that would be worthy of public remark, I promised a critical notice. It is, however, altogether so defective, that the reader’s time must not be wasted in reading what would consist altogether of censure.”91 A year later, however, Hunt was able to be more positive about the monument to Admiral Lord Howe in St Paul’s Cathedral: “The monument to Lord Howe is one of Mr. Flaxman’s best performances. The Naval Power of Great Britain is characterized by a Female in the mature vigour of life and conscious dignity of aspect; her head helmeted, in her hand a trident, and sitting on a pedestal, from the sides of which project parts of ships, whose heads are beautiful females, in the regal insignia of a robe, sceptre, and a crown; and with globes in their hands, indicative, I suppose of the nautical pre-eminence and rule of Britannia throughout the world. On the keels, and in slight relief, sea horses and naiads are sculptured. All these objects surmount a pedestal, in front of which stands the Hero of the piece.”92 Parliament voted funds for a national monument to the battle of Trafalgar, and in May 1817 it was known that Robert Smirke had won the design competition with a tower that was criticized for looking like “a shot manufactory.”93 It was to be more than a decade before the British Institution’s offer of prizes for sketches of the Nile and Trafalgar finally met Haydon’s complaint that no paintings were being commissioned to commemorate the naval war, and it was to take another three decades to see Nelson’s column in its place in Trafalgar square.

Seven O f f i c i a l Pa i n t e r s

The band of brother naval artists included a number who were directly employed by the navy. William Hodges is perhaps the best known. He had been born in 1744, the son of a blacksmith, learned to draw at William Shipley’s Academy, and studied under Richard Wilson. He worked briefly as a scene painter before sailing on Cook’s 1772 voyage to Tahiti, Hawaii, Nootka Sound, and the Bering Strait. On reaching home in 1775 he was employed by the Admiralty in finishing his pictures for publication, but he returned to India in 1780 to 1783 and grew wealthy from the patronage of Warren Hastings. Back in England again he married his third wife, a Miss Carr who was a pianist; he assisted with de Loutherbourg’s 1785 production of Omai at Covent Garden; in 1789 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy, where between 1776 and 1824 he mostly exhibited “Views”; and in 1793 he published Travels in India. As the first professional artist to visit the Pacific, and also the first to visit India, Hodges had found himself confronted by the problem of reconciling the conflicting value systems of history painting and scientific observation of nature. George Forster, who with his father had been employed in the 1772 voyage as a naturalist, objected that Hodges’s attempt to depict Pacific aboriginal people in terms that would be valued and understood by eighteenth-century society deviated from strict representation. His work had at least been based on his own observation and sketching, and was far superior as reportage than had been Cleveley’s plates for Governor Phillip’s Voyage, but it was this criticism that was remembered. Edward Edwards was to write of Hodges that “In all his productions he discovered too little attention to the true similitude of the objects he represented. This fault pervaded the drawings which he

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made in the voyage to the south Seas, and was objected to them by those who had before visited the places whence the Views were taken.”1 Neatly caught in a fork, Hodges was also criticized for lack of imagination in his depiction of atmospherics. During the long passages at sea he had become especially interested in the accurate representation of sea and sky, striving to express in paint the different lighting in tropical climates. But in doing so he alienated his English critics. Edward Dayes wrote of Hodges that “in the aggregate of his works, the coloring is too monotonous, and sometimes heavy, with an abruptness in the light and shade approaching to hardness.” He came close to suggesting that Hodges was at fault where he was most faithful: “The few compositions he has produced, may rather be called compilations, from their want of originality. He appears to have had but a feeble imagination.”2 Writing in his Travels in India in 1793, Hodges defended himself, suggesting that Reynolds’s preference for the Platonic ideal at the expense of the particular was wrong: “The imagination must be under the strict guidance of a cool judgment, or we shall have fanciful representations instead of the truth, which, above all, must be the object of such researches.”3 Hodges’s difficulties in reconciling his observations in the Pacific with the values and experiences of mid-eighteenthcentury English society anticipate the similar problems experienced by the artists of naval victory dealing with the conflicting pressures to portray the war at sea accurately while employing the rhetoric of history and battle painting, and compositional values defined by the ideas of the picturesque. Hodges ran through his wealth in an attempt to live in a style that would suggest he was a successful painter.4 Following the disastrous experiment with didactic landscape, and the Duke of York’s visit to his show, he abandoned his career as an artist and opened a bank in Dartmouth with a partner. But the bank failed in 1797 due to the panic that occurred when the Bank of England stopped payments, and in reaction to French raids on the Newfoundland fisheries in which Dartmouth money was invested. Farington believed that in the stress Hodges caught a cold, from which he died, but years later he learned that Hodges had been detected in embezzlement and had killed himself with laudanum.5 Another who worked as an official Admiralty artist was Robert Cleveley’s twin brother, John, who had begun his working life in Deptford dockyard, close to Woolwich Academy, where he met Paul Sandby. John Cleveley established a reputation for marine watercolour draw-

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ings, and exhibited at the Free Society of Artists and at the Royal Academy. In 1772 he was given the appointment of draughtsman to Sir Joseph Banks’s expedition to the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Iceland. Several of his drawings from this expedition are preserved in the British Museum. Two years later he was appointed draughtsman to Captain Phipps’s expedition to the northern seas, and provided the illustrations for the published journal of the voyage. Another Cleveley boy, James, sailed as carpenter of the Resolution in Captain James Cook’s second voyage of Pacific discovery, and made a number of drawings that John Cleveley used as the basis of watercolour pictures, which were later published as aquatints by F. Jukes.6 Unfortunately, John Cleveley died in 1786, too early to play any part in the representation of the naval war against the French republic and empire. Yet another of the official discovery artists was Devis, whose contribution to the portrayal of the naval war against the French Empire was limited to his Death of Nelson. He had got an important start to his career when he sailed as official artist on an East India Company expedition in 1783. The voyage came to grief when the packet Antelope, commanded by Captain Wilson, was wrecked off the Pelew islands. The crew volunteered as soldiers for the local people, built themselves a vessel, and eventually returned to England via China. During his adventures Devis had been shot twice with arrows, one of which permanently damaged his jaw.

 In home waters the work of making coastal views was undertaken by naval officers who would understand what terrain features were important, and what angle of approach would be most useful. The appearance of coastal features is very much affected by the observer’s line of approach, and may become unrecognizable if viewed from a slightly different direction. It was unusual to employ professional artists for that purpose. In 1800, however, unprecedented circumstances produced by the close blockade imposed on French naval harbours led the Admiralty to offer John Thomas Serres, a professional artist who had earlier been a drawing instructor preparing young men for a career in the navy, a contract to execute views of the French coast. Rarely can it be said that an artist was born into privilege, but that was the case with John Thomas because of the position his father,

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Dominic Serres, had established for himself. The elder Serres had been born in Gascony and had run away to sea to avoid a career in the church. In his Anecdotes of Painters, Edward Edwards wrote that Serres “left his friends rather abruptly and went to the West Indies, which voyage was occasioned, as he said himself, by a disappointment in a tender connection.”7 He had risen in the merchant service to the position of master of a ship, before being captured by an English frigate and brought to England possibly as early as 1752. There he met and was influenced by Charles Brookings, who was probably the foremost marine painter of the first half of the eighteenth century, and befriended by Paul Sandby. He married an English girl named Caldecot in 1758, by which time he was already doing well enough as a painter, with royal patronage, to be able to support her and his family. His introduction to the role of war artist came through a navy purser, Richard Short, who was an accomplished draftsman. Short hired Dominic Serres to make paintings from his drawings, beginning with the Quebec campaign of 1759.8 William Henry Pyne, alias Ephraim Hardcastle, records that: “Grateful for this royal munificence, the worthy painter hoisted the English flag when he knew the King was passing the Knightsbridge Road, to or from Windsor. His late Majesty used to look out for the flag, and frequently observed, ‘There is honest Dominic’s signal flying.’”9 He was chosen to be one of the founding members of the Royal Academy when it was established in 1768, and in 1792 he had been given the honorific by King George III as Marine Painter to His Majesty. His connections with continental artists extended to Claude-Joseph Vernet, and Holcroft records Sir William Beechey’s story that after showing Vernet one of his pictures the latter cuttingly commented, “Upon my word, Sir, you paint ropes exceedingly well.”10 John Thomas was Dominic’s eldest son. He was born 12 December 1759 and had first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776 when he was seventeen. It isn’t known when he became a drawing master at the Maritime School in Chelsea at £50 per year, possibly through the patronage of Admiral Lord Hawke. It is evident that he travelled to Germany and Ireland in 1787, and in the best company. He sent to the Royal Academy exhibitions in 1787 and 1788 a Portrait of the Augusta Yacht, with a view of Gluckstadt, on the Elbe, and a View of the Lighthouse in the Bay of Dublin, with his Majesty’s Yacht Dorset. Presumably he encountered Robert Cleveley, who was then onboard the Princess Augusta, and in a letter he referred to Captain Vandeput as his

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“good friend.”11 Evidently John Thomas did not sail in the yachts in any official capacity, but it is also evident that he made good use of his opportunities, for in 1789 or 1790 he began to style himself as “Marine Painter to the Duke of Clarence.” A catalogue of his paintings offered for sale in 1790 to pay the expenses of an extensive visit to southern Europe indicates that, apart from his travels to Ireland and Germany, he had already travelled to Holland, Portugal, and Naples. It also shows the scale of Serres’s collection of work by other artists.12 His 1790 artist’s tour took him to Genoa, Livorno, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Naples, equipped with a letter of introduction from Sir Joshua Reynolds to John Udny, the British consul in Livorno. He signed paintings from this period as Giovanni Serres. One of the people he met on his travels was Ellis Cornelia Knight, who was later to join Nelson and the Hamiltons on their overland trip from Naples to England following the Battle of the Nile. No doubt it was out of consideration for the elder Serres that King George made John Thomas heir to his father’s position of “Marine Painter to His Majesty.”13 As Serres’s name does not appear in the index of Court appointments, it must be assumed that there was no salary attached to the honorific.14 Nevertheless, the appointment at the age of thirty-four was a very valuable step in John Thomas’s career, and should have ensured a comfortable future for him. Art connoisseurs were often more impressed by a painter’s position in society than by the more difficult matters of composition, line, and colour. Williams, a.k.a. Anthony Pasquin, was one who was not taken in. Reviewing Serres’s A Frigate in a Hard Gale off the Eddystone, which had been placed in the 1794 Royal Academy exhibition, he wrote: “This nautical morsel possesses but little of the supreme taste and knowledge of the artist’s deceased father: there is an outline of hardness to the water, which those who study deeply could never perceive; they [i.e., Serres’s waves] are as determined as the Glaciers of Savoy. If this gentleman would condescend to copy one of the fine pictures, by Vandevelde, I am persuaded he would forego his turgidity of finishing.”15 That John Thomas was not his father’s equal as a painter is too generally felt to be much open to question, but Williams’s strictures are too sweeping. At his best the younger Serres completed some very lovely canvasses. Farington noted in his diary on 14 June 1794, three days after Sir Roger Curtis’s arrival in London with Lord Howe’s victory dispatch, that John Thomas came “with some designs to represent the naval engagement,

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viz., the ships breaking the line; and the state of the fleet, including prizes after the engagement.” And a few days later he noted that he had called on Serres, “who shewed me his 4 sketches, one of the action & one after it, on the first of June, – one the Royal Salute at Spithead, – and the launching the Prince of 90 guns. – He has applied by letter to Admiral Gardner to get him a commission from the Admiralty to paint them, or for their sanction that He may make Prints of them.” There is no evidence that he did get an Admiralty commission to paint battle pictures, but there is a notation in the digest of Admiralty correspondence of a letter dated 21 January 1796 concerning Serres’s paintings.16 Unfortunately the letter itself has been culled by the short-sighted Admiralty. The National Maritime Museum possesses a pen and ink drawing of the Battle of the Glorious First of June which may have been one of the sketches for this project, and it also has a rare example of the work of John Thomas’s younger brother, named Dominic like their father – a picture of the same subject in a grey wash.17 In the Manuscript Room of the British Library is preserved a large topographical watercolour of Toulon Harbour, taken from seaward, dated tentatively as from 1796 and attributed to John Thomas.18 But there is no reason for supposing that he was there at that date, or that he was then employed by the navy. The picture does not closely resemble his other work, and is more likely to have been completed by a naval officer during the British occupation of Toulon in 1793 or during the subsequent blockade. A watercolour view of Liverpool from seaward in the Map Room of the British Library, dated 1797, is Serres’s work, but it shows no sign of having been an official commission. The topographical detail is too much obscured by the presence of shipping in the foreground for the picture to have had any value as an aid to navigation. Farington notes in his diary that in October 1798 Serres was residing with his wife in Liverpool, and that he had recently visited Manchester, where he sold ten pictures for £50 apiece.19 Following the invasion scares of 1797 and 1798, the Admiralty felt the need to manage the blockade of Brest directly from London, so as to ensure that forces were placed where they had a prospect of intercepting the French should they try and break out. That led to Serres’s being employed by the navy. On 9 September 1799 Evan Nepean, the First Secretary of the Board of Admiralty, informed Admiral Lord Bridport, who had succeeded Howe as commander of the channel Fleet, that

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he had “engaged Mr. Serres, the marine painter whose father I dare say your Lordship very well remembers, to go out in one of the ships from Plymouth for the purpose of taking views of Brest and the environs and to continue at sea during your present cruise.” “It is somewhat extraordinary [he continued] that, excepting a sketch taken by the schoolmaster of the Sans Pareil there is not one view of that port or of any part of the coast in its vicinity to be found in this or any other of the public offices, though every possible search has been made.” The civilian members of the Board, including the First Lord Earl Spencer, found that “views of that description give landsmen a better idea than the best constructed charts.” “I flatter myself [he concluded, that] your Lordship will receive Mr. Serres kindly and that you will give him every opportunity of performing the service required of him by putting him on board the frigates and other ships you may order to reconnoitre and the more extended his views are along the coast the better. I am to give him a large sum for this service.”20 Reputedly the sum was £100 per month.21 This was a job that made the best possible use of Serres’s particular talents, including his use of a strong outline. When he began work has not been determined, but on 13 June 1800 the Earl of St Vincent, who had succeeded Bridport in command of the channel fleet, wrote to Spencer that he intended to send hm Frigate Clyde, Captain Charles Cunningham, “along the coasts of France, Spain and part of Portugal to enable Mr. Serres to complete his views.”22 According to Clyde’s log, Serres came on board from the Nymph on June 28 while in company with the Channel Fleet when nine miles north of “Bec de Roy,” the Bec du Ras on the Brittany coast. For the next week the log regularly mentioned Serres’s work “taking a view,” and Clyde stretched as far south as Ferrol for the purpose. After that, Cunningham apparently lost interest in recording the activity of the artist, and he was only mentioned again, in Clyde’s muster book, when he was discharged on 30 August onto hms Endymion, under the command of Captain Thomas Williams.23 On his arrival at Spithead on 9 September, Captain Williams reported to the Admiralty that he had seen all of Serres’s drawings of the coast of France and Spain and that “those parts that I am acquainted with are most accurately taken.”24 As was inevitable, Serres’s views exaggerate the vertical axis in order to be able to express on paper detail that would be visible to the eye. On one occasion Clyde hove to to enable Serres to do his work, but generally he worked while under sail in light breezes. In

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one of the fair copy text books owned by cadets at the Royal Naval Academy, it was recommended that when surveying coasts it was preferable to employ a Hadley’s sextant to obtain horizontal angles between terrain details, rather than rely upon an azimuth compass, which could be affected by variation and deviation. But it is not known whether Serres used either instrument.25 It is not clear whether he was ever expected to deposit his drawings at the Admiralty, but if so, they have not been traced. It appears probable that their Lordships were content that he publish them himself, which he did in a beautiful folio volume called The Little Sea Torch: or True Guide for Coasting Pilots, published in 1801 at J. Debrett’s printing house in Piccadilly. The text was a translation of Le Sieur Bougard’s sailing directions for the eastern Atlantic and the western Mediterranean, “enriched with upwards of one hundred appearances of head-lands and light-houses together with the plans of the principal harbours and a table of soundings, and various explanatory remarks.”26 Included were views of the most important Mediterranean ports, but it is not known when Serres made the sketches for these works. They may have dated from his prewar travels. The King, the Prince of Wales, the dukes of York and Clarence, and Prince William of Gloucester led the list of those who subscribed to purchase the book on publication. The Admiralty itself only purchased two copies. By then Admiral Earl St Vincent had replaced the civilian Earl Spencer as First Lord. Presumably he had less need of graphic aids to visualization of the French coast, but nonetheless he purchased two copies for himself. The vast majority of the remainder of the 170 subscribers were naval officers. This may well be considered to be Serres’s most important contribution to the arts of naval victory, both because it was a valuable aid to navigation and because it displays such consummate workmanship. The harbour charts in The Little Sea Torch were the work of John Luffman, who was active between 1776 and 1820 as an engraver, publisher, and goldsmith.27 In 1800, when he was working from premises at Little Bell Alley, Coleman Street, he published in two volumes an atlas of Selected Plans of the Principal Cities, Harbours, Forts &c. in the World. Another of his publications was a Pocket Chronologist, or Authentic Register of Recent Events both Foreign and Domestic. The Naval Chronicle published quite a few of Luffman’s charts.



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John Thomas Serres, Three Views of Gibraltar, from The Little Sea Torch plate 8. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

In 1800, £100 a month was a very great deal of money, and Serres’s future should have appeared very rosy indeed. However, the reality was different. In the same years immediately before the outbreak of war with France that saw de Loutherbourg brought nearly to disaster by an artistic temperament and perverse notions, Serres had started down a parallel road that was to lead eventually to his total ruin, and to his death in 1825 in the King’s Bench debtor’s prison. “To those who knew Serres only as a man of business,” a friend of his wrote in a tract that set out to explain Serres’s destruction, “his character had not much to recommend it: liberal in his promises to his creditors, as in hopes to himself, punctuality was never his recommendation. Extravagance, however, was as little his foible. His mode of life was simple: and his habits those of activity and industry.” But these virtues were not enough to compensate for the vulnerability of a man with a fond heart and a weak head. Of his mental qualifications little can be said in praise. The rank with which he had associated, the talent for his art, which he undoubtedly possessed, the countries he had travelled in, the languages he was master of, and the

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education he received in his youth, – all these promised beforehand much more than his acquaintance realized. In fact, to be a painter was his object; and to this end had been sacrificed many of the embellishments of life. His conversation was open and sincere; often aiming at wit, but seldom reaching it; and with a humour attempted more in his pencil than in his speech, but no more his forte in the one than in the other. He was however, always a pleasant companion, though not an intellectual one. – He was sensible and thoughtful, rather avoiding than seeking the society of the gay, and never so happy as when removed from the busy haunts of men, prosecuting the grand pursuit of his life in the retirement of some glen, or in the contemplation of some maritime scene.28

This simple man, with considerable gifts as an artist, if falling short of his father’s abilities, proved to have a tremendous entrepreneurial drive when necessity forced him to turn over every stone in search of a living. Nevertheless, he was to be destroyed by his disastrous choice of a wife. Apparently John Thomas took private students to supplement his income from the Chelsea Maritime School. One of these was Olivia, a young woman whose father was a decorative and mural painter by the name of Robert Wilmot. He had been in the employ of the Earl of Warwick, but had broken with his employer and obtained Dominic Serres’s assistance establishing himself in business in London. John Thomas had been on the point of leaving on his tour of France and Italy when he undertook “the dangerous task” of giving Olivia drawing lessons. “Those who remember Miss Wilmot, agree in speaking of her as of one who, to the effects of great beauty, added a fascination of no ordinary power. Her acquired accomplishments were few, but she naturally possessed an unusual acuteness.” Reynolds thought she was interesting enough to warrant his drawing her portrait.29 In the three weeks John Thomas taught her drawing, she was “afforded ample occasion for her lesson in the less difficult art of love.” When, unavoidably, he set sail for France in 1789, he and she were secretly engaged to marry. The original plan had been to make a trip lasting three years. Pictures of his which date from this trip and soon after his return reveal his potential, and his capacity to work in the tradition of Claude Joseph Vernet.30 But Serres was only to stay away for one year. Olivia soon disclosed her engagement to John Thomas’s horrified father, who strenuously objected to the match and soon came to hear of

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her coquetry with other suitors. She was at the time living with an elderly clergyman uncle in Warwickshire, who gave her the run of his library where she picked up some knowledge of the world from reviews and from his pornography. When she tired of that, or was enough stimulated, she appealed to John Thomas to return home to protect her. On his return his friends warned him that he had engaged himself to a termagant, and his father refused his consent to marriage, but John Thomas paid no heed and on 1 September 1791 “the fatal ceremony took place,” by special license as Olivia was under age. Olivia’s uncle officiated, and at the marriage breakfast he is reported to have said, “Serres, she is now your wife; but mind – keep her employed, or she will be plotting mischief.”31 Without the patronage of his royal and professional subscribers, it is unlikely that Serres would have been able to undertake the publication of The Little Sea Torch, because his already stormy relationship with Olivia had come to a crisis. During the 1790s Olivia had complained of Serres’s infidelities, which his friend denies occurred. Most likely she was seeking to lay the blame on the innocent party, because her own infidelities and extravagances were notorious. As early as 1795 Serres appears to have been in serious financial difficulties. Farington notes in his diary on 5 August: “John Serres, has quitted his House suddenly and it is said has eluded his Creditors.” Part of the £600 that his father had deposited with the Royal Academy Fund had to be used to relieve him, with the consequences that the following July Paul Sandby had to apply for a charitable grant to assist Serres’s mother. She was to require charitable support again in 1804 and in 1813, when Serres had also to apply on behalf of his sister, who was in prison for debt.32 The Admiralty commission was most timely, but, according to the anonymous friend, while Serres was at sea in 1800 Olivia forged his name to many bills of exchange for as much as £150 at a time in order to finance an extremely expensive, and lascivious, lifestyle. She amused herself by visiting “masquerades in dresses which female modesty might blush at,” and she systematically cuckolded her husband. Her forgery made her liable to transportation to the penal colony at Botany Bay in Australia, but rather than let the law take its course, her still loving husband accepted responsibility for the bills. Years later Serres told Farington that Olivia’s misconduct had “taken from him £1,500 which He had saved, & further other expences on Her acc[oun]t had reduced Him so as to cause him to be thrown into the King’s bench

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prison.”33 The anonymous Memoir also states that Serres was forced into bankruptcy by his acceptance of Olivia’s debts, but he seems to have been able to delay an execution for debt, and to have attempted to find a way out of his financial difficulties by establishing a commercial gallery in partnership with George Field and William Ashford. It is to be supposed that Field was the chemist who embarked with Sir Joseph Banks to cultivate madder in England and invented a percolator to reduce it to a pigment; Ashford was a landscape painter who had been an associate of John Thomas’s father. Serres called on Farington to solicit his support, and mentioned that West, Bourgeois, Opie, and Beechey were enthusiastic about the project. The gallery was duly opened in Berners Street, and named, confusingly, “The British School.”34 Apparently Serres conducted art classes on the premises. But evidently all was not as it should be. The Memoir says a Mr “F” moved into Serres’s home, making little if any attempt to disguise an illicit relationship with Olivia. Serres only endured the ménage à trois until Olivia was delivered of her child, Britannia, on 2 December 1802. Britannia and the first-born, Livinia, were to be the only two of Olivia’s babies to survive childhood. In December 1803 it was known that Serres had severed his relationship with the British School, and about the same time he formally separated from Olivia by deed.35 He provided her with an allowance of £200 p.a., but stopped payment when he found that his children were suffering severe neglect. To her trustee he wrote, according to the Memoir: “For that disgraceful woman who bears my name, let her perish for want as she merits, or apply to the one amongst, those she has granted favours to of late, whom she means to honour with the appellation of father to the bastard she was delivered of the other day, for subsistence. As she granted him the use of her person, she is surely entitled to his purse in return.” On 20 June 1804 Olivia met Farington at the Academy, presumably hoping he would support an application for payment to her from the Academy fund. She denied that there had been any “intimacy with Field … time would prove the falsehood of the charge,” but she also said that Field had lost four to five hundred pounds by Serres’s agreement to pay her £200 a year.36 On 24 July 1806 Farington noted: “John Serres is in the King’s Bench. His wife arrested Him for non-payment of the annuity of £200 which He had been weak enough to settle upon Her. She has had lodgings in [blank] Street St. James’s Square, & lately sold what she could and went away with[ou]t the knowledge of Her landlord

Peltro William Tomkins after John Thomas Serres, To Admiral Sir Hyde Parker Kt. Commander in Chief, Vice Admiral Lord Nelson and Rear Admiral Thomas Graves, the Captains, Officers, Seamen, Marines and Soldiers of the British Fleet this plate representing the Defeat of the Danish Fleet and Batteries off Copenhagen the second of April 1801, is dedicated with the greatest respect by their Most Obedient Humble Servant, P.W. Tomkins, London, Published as the Act Directs, July 4 1801, by, no. 49 New Bond Street. bm 1870.6.25.1118.

with[ou]t paying what she owed him. There has been a struggle who should have the Child she had by Serres: but by management she has got it.”37 The Memoir quotes Serres as saying, when the legal action was taken against him, “I have made my mind up to go to prison, where the produce of my labours shall be appropriated to every use but that of encouraging a wife in whoredom.” It appears that he moved voluntarily into the “Rules” of the King’s Bench prison to work off his debt.

 The Little Sea Torch had not been Serres’s only artistic effort during the dark years after his voyage in the Clyde. In 1801 he exhibited at the Academy An Extensive View of Valetta Harbour with Two British Men of War, which he may have painted from sketches made while working for the Admiralty in 1800, or may have originated in Serres’s travels before

John Thomas Serres, Pandaemonium of Boulogne, bm 1878.7.13.4654

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the outbreak of war.38 On 4 July 1802 Peltro William Tomkins, Historic Engraver to His Majesty, published a print he had himself engraved and aquatinted from a painting by Serres of the squadron under Vice Admiral Lord Nelson attacking the Danish fleet at Copenhagen.39 This was one of Serres’s more impressive efforts, and the wonder is that he was able to concentrate enough to undertake the work. There is no reason to think that Serres had been an eye witness, or even visited Copenhagen, and it is possible, because the traditions of print-making in England encouraged engravers to interpret their subjects with some freedom, that Tomkins’s print reflects Tomkins’s art more than it did Serres’s. In 1804 Serres tried his hand at panorama painting, with 150-foot nearly circular view of Boulogne showing Napoleon’s preparations for the invasion of England. It was the subject of a letter mentioned in the Admiralty Correspondence Digest for 19 June 1804, which suggests that it might have been an official commission or that the navy had provided a ship from which he could view the shore, but again the relevant file has been culled from the Admiralty In-Letters. The panorama was exhibited to the public at the Great Rooms, Spring Gardens. Serres published a circular key evidently intended to be seen from above, which shows that spectators viewed the panorama from one side of the circle standing on a reproduction of the stern gallery of Rear Admiral Louis’s flag ship.40 Barker’s patented arrangements for obscuring the top and bottom of the picture cannot have been employed, but it must have been lit from the top. The following year Serres published another book. This time the subject was marine painting, intended to provide artists with good, clear, technical images of what ships looked like so that they could avoid the worst blunders that so irritated the seamen. There is some feeling that Serres was desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point, for half the book is the work of his long-deceased father. Probably the book originated as a teaching aid for Serres’s own use at the British School. The Liber Nauticus is more impressive for the energy that Serres, who his friend says was never in ill health, was able to find for his work. The bulk of the book is made up of plates of ships, mostly showing no artistic interest but all correct in detail and perspective, and among which there are a few that are striking technical drawings with both practical and artistic value. One of these is a plate showing two views of a mast hulk. The balance of the subject in that plate is faultless, as is the technical

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detail, and the overall impression is very interesting.41 All the plates in the second half of the book are based on drawings by Serres’s father, Dominic, whose style was more impressionistic. These had been prepared for the instruction of “a nobleman” who agreed to their reuse. There is evidence that John Thomas had collaborated with his father before the latter’s death, so his use of material by the elder Serres was legitimate.42 The effect, however, was to give the book an inconsistent appearance, which was increased by Serres’s employing several different engravers for the plates. The text is of little value. The small craft in Pyne’s Microcosm are superior to most of the images in the Liber Nauticus. Further competition for Serres was suggested by the engraver William Wells. Farington noted in his diary on 17 February 1810 that Wells called and “spoke of his having formed a design to make a Collection of drawings of all the Vessels, Boats up to Vessels of the largest size, used in every part of the world. He spoke highly of Pocock’s excellence in drawing Ships correctly & in placing [them] properly in the water & before the wind.” Later in the year Farington recorded that Wells had purchased one of Pocock’s paintings.43 But the book was never published. Serres was fortunate to discover his daughter Britannia living with the nurse whom Olivia had hired, and then abandoned. He decided to leave London to make a new life for himself and his daughter, and his friend says he successfully defended himself against three of Olivia’s creditors, so that they began to be less willing to fill her orders except for ready cash. In 1808 he decided to leave England altogether and fled across the border to Scotland. This should have freed him from the threat of arrest for bankruptcy because Scots and English law were entirely separate and without extradition for debt, but Olivia’s lawyers caught up with him in Edinburgh, and demanded payment of their own fees for services against himself. He was jailed. Lawyers have ways of looking after themselves. Serres felt obliged to sign a bond for the sum, and returned to London in order to earn the necessary money. This he attempted to do by writing under his mother’s maiden name, as Thomas Caldecot, Gent., a book illustrated with his own drawings telling about his flight. Even his friend was obliged to admit it was not very good, and it was never printed. Sometime during these terrible years he is thought to have attempted suicide. Serres continued to execute easel paintings, but Farington reports that when he visited the British Institution in July 1806 he was told that Field had had a picture that Serres was exhibiting seized in payment of

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debts.44 In 1812 Field told Farington that Serres had never contributed to the financing of the “British School,” which had been done by Field and Ashford, but that his legal obligations, presumably his unpaid maintenance of Olivia, eventually became a liability to the school. If Field had indeed been Olivia’s fancy man, he had little grounds for complaint, but his story does corroborate Olivia’s statement in other respects. The School was forced into liquidation, but Field said it “gave rise to the British Institution which was formed upon it.”45 It was also formed on an investment of £7,000 by wealthy patrons who purchased Boydell’s bankrupt Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall for £4,500. West lent his support because the British Institution would not be in competition with the Royal Academy.46 For seven years after 1808 Serres did not exhibit anything at the Royal Academy, and he extended his boycott of the British Institution until 1824. Somehow he managed to accumulate by 1816 the sum of £2,000, which he decided to invest as a partner in the new Royal Coburg Theatre at Lambeth, in which he took the job of scene painter. Apparently his influence at Court was still good enough that he was able to get the support of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg and Princess Caroline in his application for the necessary license.47 A striking drawing of a Man-o’War now preserved in the Prints and Drawings room of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a bows-on view of a ship under full sail, has just enough theatricality about it to suggest that it might have been intended as the cartoon for a stage set.48 Serres decorated one of the theatre’s rooms as a “Marine Saloon” with Neptune, seahorses, water-gods and dolphins, and with a mural of Exmouth’s bombardment of Algiers by an AngloDutch fleet on 27 August 1816 under the command of Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth.49 Unfortunately, recent redecoration has covered over the mural. The Algiers operation had particularly caught the attention of the public because it led to the release of 1,083 Christian slaves, and the abolition of slavery by the Bey of Tunis. The connection between the theatre and marine painting, which de Loutherbourg had established, was to be reinforced by more than Serres’s own work at the Royal Coburg. In 1818 he agreed to employ Clarkson Stanfield as a junior. Stanfield had secured his release from naval service in 1815 and was to make such an impression at his new job that in later years it was he who was to be remembered for his work there.50 Stanfield soon moved on, but Serres’s future as a scene painter was to be short. In November 1822 the Royal Coburg Theatre got into serious financial difficulties. Joseph Glossop, its director, fled the country to avoid

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his creditors. Serres lost his entire investment. This disaster obliged him to return to marine painting, but Olivia still dominated his stars, and her actions were to complete his destruction. Olivia was a highly creative woman. She had exhibited some paintings of her own at the Royal Academy in 1793, and exhibited another thirteen paintings in the next fifteen years. She contributed two paintings to the first exhibition at the British Institution and exhibited thirteen pictures there between 1806 and 1811. In 1806 she was appointed Landscape Painter to the Prince of Wales, but the appointment may have been occasioned more by her personal fascinations than by her artistic talents. She had also published in 1805 a novel, St Julian, and a play, The Castle of Avola. Flights of Fancy: Poems followed in 1806, and on the death of her uncle in 1808 she published The Life of the Author of Junius’s Letters, the Reverend James Wilmot, D.D., making an entirely bogus assertion that he had been the author of the anonymous political letters of the 1760s. To the indignation of Serres’s friend, who had watched her neglect most of her children, six of whom died in infancy, and the corruption of her eldest daughter Lavinia, she published in 1814 Olivia’s Letters to her Daughters and St. Athanasius’s Creed explained for the Advantage of Youth. This was followed by Junius, Sir Philip Francis Denied! A Letter Addressed to the British Nation. The second half of St. Athanasius’s Creed Explained was an “Essay” in verse, about which perhaps the less said the better. This quantity of literary production by a woman who had had no formal education is remarkable, if she actually wrote the books. Serres’s friend has not been identified beyond doubt, but there is a possibility that he was the same William Combe who wrote Dr. Syntax to Rowlandson’s drawings. It is known that Combe befriended a young man by the name of Anthony Ryves and intended to make him his literary heir, but Ryves offended him by marrying Olivia’s daughter Lavinia.51 Could it be that Olivia, who was so good at getting men to do things for her, had employed Combe as a ghost writer for at least some of her books? He is known to have written anonymously, no doubt to keep his royalties out of the hands of his creditors. Perhaps he did, and then fell out with her. If Combe was the author of The Life of the Author of Junius’s Letters, it would be a remarkable instance of a ghost-written fraudulent effort to appropriate the renown of a pseudonymous author! But there is no real reason to suppose that Olivia was not a writer as well as a painter. She also tried her hand at science and in 1829 ad-

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vertised “to the Naval and Maritime Officers of Great Britain” inviting members of the services to view models of an “improved compass.” What is apposite at this point, is to ask whether she had royal blood in her veins. In 1817 she began to make a claim to be the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland and a Mrs Payne, sister of Dr Wilmot and wife of a naval officer. Presumably the officer in question was Rear Admiral John Willet Payne, who, conveniently, had died on 17 November 1803. After the death of George III in 1820, she elevated her claim to that of legitimate daughter of the duke, and began to style herself Princess Olive of Cumberland. She hired a coach and had the royal coat of arms painted on it, and drove out with her servants dressed in royal livery. When arrested for debt in 1821, she pleaded that as a royal princess she was immune from process, and then produced a will purported to have been George III’s leaving £15,000 to “Olive, daughter to our brother of Clarence.” In March 1823 Sir Gerard Noel was to petition parliament on her behalf, but the application was negatived without a vote. Her personal magnetism continued to be so strong that she was able to get the support of lawyers, one of whom she attempted to keep in her interest with sexual favours, and a minister of religion, who wrote letters describing her sufferings. She stirred up a hornets’ nest at court. The Home Office records have extensive files of such letters, and statements of claim.52 Olivia was also suspected of being behind the anonymous publication of the scandalous Secret History of the Court of England, and the Authentic Records of the Court of England by Lady Anne Hamilton. Lady Hamilton denied any connection with the book. The somewhat obscure conclusion reached by Olivia’s biographers, Mary Pendered and Justinian Mallett, is that “whilst Olivia was almost certainly the daughter of the Duke of Cumberland, and possibly a legitimate daughter, she was nevertheless, in all probability, an imposter.” They also acknowledge that “whatever opinion one may hold as to her bona-fides, there can be no doubt whatever that, false or genuine, Princess or Pretender, she was a supreme egotist of the first water, scintillating within the aura of her own imagination.” Her case may have been genuine, but her outrageous behaviour, and her fabrication of documents to support a claim which she had to adjust as she acquired more information, ensured that the Court of England did not acknowledge its legitimacy.53 Serres found himself tarred beyond redemption. He tried everything to retain his court connections, including painting a picture of the royal

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yacht Prince Regent, which he presented to the king, George IV, but he was still denied an audience. When in 1822 the king decided it was time for a royal visit to Scotland, the first by the Hanoverian monarchy, Serres requested accommodation in the royal squadron as “Marine Painter to the King.” He was refused and had to pay his own expenses. In Edinburgh he met J.M.W. Turner, who was there for the same purpose. Serres painted several pictures of the royal progress, including one of his greatest watercolour paintings, The Arrival of His Majesty George the Fourth in Scotland, Accompanied by the Royal Flotilla, August 1822.54 But he was refused permission to dedicate to the king prints taken from them and, having failed to get royal patronage, he was also unable to persuade anyone else to agree to lending his name to the prints that were to have been made. Serres ended by selling his pictures for £20 each.55 This did not quite finish Serres. Ever optimistic, he decided to compete for the British Institution prizes for the best pictures of the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. Although his failing artistic skills were outclassed by many of his contemporaries, he had great hopes that he could win a competition for a naval subject. His friend’s opinion of his work was cautious: “Of the merits of these paintings we may be allowed to say, that they are executed with that accuracy as to design, and correctness as to martial tactics, which, combined with the known skill of the artist, render them valuable as accurate representations of the scenes they celebrate. He had procured all the official dispatches, and referred to all the means of information, which the history of the times supplied, or his official appointment gave him access to. They were sent in to the exhibition, and during a considerable time adorned the collection of the society; but, in reference to the prize, they were rejected.”56 Serres also painted smaller canvasses of the battles, which are in private hands. As they are not dated, it is possible they are earlier works from a happier time. This other Battle of the Nile appears, from such reproductions as are available, to be a quite unusual picture giving a distant view of the fleets with an extensive sea and sky. The general effect is very good.57 Serres’s Battle of Trafalgar October 21st 1805, which is undated but may well have been the competition piece, is quite different. It shows several ships fairly close to the viewer, looking rather like models on a painted sea. It has an air of Renaissance Italy, and in full colour the effect is probably rather impressive.58 A series of aquatint prints of Trafalgar, and the storm following, were made by John

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Hall from Serres’s work. Each was dedicated to one of the admirals who commanded in the battle.59 Not everyone can win, but it is quite possible that Serres was disqualified by Olivia’s indiscretions even before he picked up his brushes. Within a few months he was stricken by a tumour under his left arm. A few days before Christmas in 1825, without resources, he was found quarters by a friend within the rules of the King’s Bench. On 28 December he died. Four days later the Council of the Royal Academy, at the motion of Sir William Beechey, voted to pay Miss Serres a sum of £20, presumably to cover the funeral expenses of her brother.60 Incidentally, Olivia, who had in her lifetime broken almost all the rules of society, was herself to die within those of the King’s Bench. Her elder surviving daughter, Lavinia, was to continue the futile pursuit of royal recognition, again with the assistance of Sir Gerard Noel, who in 1844 sued the Duke of Wellington as executor of George III’s estate. As late as 1866 she was in court to press her claim. But even before the Solicitor General, Sir Roundell Palmer, had finished his address for the crown, the jury rejected her claim on the grounds that the signatures were forged.

 At the same time that Serres was returning from his intelligencegathering voyage around the coast of France to find that Olivia had forged his name on ruinous bills, William Westall was putting his kit together for the job as draughtsman on the Investigator sailing on a voyage of discovery to Australia under Mathew Flinders’s command. Born in 1781 in Hertford, Westall was a student at the Royal Academy and only eighteen years old when Benjamin West was asked to recommend a draughtsman for the Investigator. No doubt Mary Westall was glad that it was her brother, rather than her betrothed William Daniell, who eventually accepted the post. William Westall’s elder half-brother, Richard, asked Farington to recommend the younger Westall to Sir Joseph Banks, and remarked that Flinders “seemed to think him young.” Daniell lent his future brother-in-law the £200 cost of his outfit on Richard Westall’s surety.61 The Flinders expedition sailed on 18 July 1801 from Spithead and lasted for two years. William Westall’s work included drawing coastal

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profiles that would serve later navigators. In his published Voyage to Terra Australis Flinders wrote about drawings made at Port Phillip: “When the entrance was cleared, and five miles distant, Mr. Westall took a view of it, which will be an useful assistance in finding this extensive, but obscure port; and at 11 o’clock, when we bore away eastward to pass Cape Schanck, he sketched that cape and the ridge of hills terminating at Arthur’s Seat … It will always be desirable for vessels to get sight of this cape, before they run far into the great bight for Port Phillip; and if the wind blow strong from the southward, it will be unsafe to run without having seen it.”62 Westall’s Cape Schanck taken May 3 1802 at 11.h a.m. and Entrance of Port Phillip taken May 3 1802 at 9.h 20⬘ a.m. are in the Mitchell Library, Sydney. An examination of Flinders’s narrative and Westall’s pictures reveals how carefully the latter recorded the geological details which his captain thought important for identification.63 In Westall’s obituary in the Art Journal it was noticed that Captain, later Admiral, Philip Parker King, who was employed between 1817 and 1823 surveying the Australian coast, and commanded the voyage of the Adventure and the Beagle, which sailed in 1826 to survey the South American coast, told a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society: “On their first approach to Australia, in the neighbourhood of King George’s Sound, during a heavy gale, they doubted whether they could make the harbour, but as they approached the coast they so readily recognized the entrance by the aid of the illustration that they sailed straight in without hesitation instead of being beaten about at sea. Captain King was much pleased on being told that Mr. Westall was present, and at the close of the meeting warmly thanked him for the assistance received from the thoroughly artistic accuracy of his work.”64 Flinders had to abandon the Investigator at Port Jackson, New South Wales, as unseaworthy. The crew were transferred into the Porpoise for the voyage home, but were wrecked on a coral atoll off the northwestern coast of Australia. Farington heard the story from Lieutenant Samuel Ward Flinders, Mathew’s younger brother, when he met Commodore Dance in 1804. Fortunately, no lives were lost, and Westall’s sketches were preserved. A watercolour sketch of Wreck Reef: the encampment after the wreck of the Porpoise on the Australian Great Barrier Reef, 1803, still the property of the Ministry of Defence, is now on loan to the National Maritime Museum.65 Flinders made a passage in an open boat to Port Jackson, and returned with schooners to rescue the maroons. It was

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William Westall, Wreck Reef: the encampment after the wreck of the Porpoise on the Australian Great Barrier Reef, 1803, watercolour, © nmm bhc 1164.

while he was on his way home via Canton as a passenger in the East Indiaman Rolla that Westall witnessed Dance’s remarkable defence of the China trade. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he may have been a passenger on Dance’s own ship, the Earl Camden.66 Westall had not been happy even before the wreck. William Farington told his brother that “he had been privately informed that it was thought that [William Westall’s] Head had been affected by the accident which happened to Him at Madeira, of Losing His drawings & having narrowly escaped drowning.”67 If true, the episode at Wreck Reef must have tried him severely. From Canton he wrote Sir Joseph Banks complaining: “I was not aware the voyage was confined to New Holland [i.e., Australia] only. Had I known this I most certainly would not have engaged in a hazardous voyage where I could have little opportunity of employing my pencil with any advantage to myself or my employers.”68

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The idea that there was nothing picturesque in Australia will strike modern readers as rather odd. Westall’s intention to visit Sri Lanka was abandoned, but he visited inland China and India, where Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, provided him with introductions. To his credit, he was appalled by the suffering from famine and drought he observed. He was back in England early in 1805, but soon set off on a voyage back to Madeira and eventually to Jamaica. When he finally returned to England he undertook to paint a series of pictures from the material he had accumulated during his travels. In 1805, 1806, and 1810 he exhibited views from his voyages at the Royal Academy, and exhibited at Brook Street, Hanover Square, in 1808. Ten of the foreign views were exhibited at the Associated Artists, but he left the society on the 27 June 1809 on the grounds that his work was increasingly being undertaken in oil. Nevertheless, he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours on 11 June 1810, and a full member a year later on 10 June. During this period Westall was also engaged in preparing for publication the drawings he had made on the Flinders expedition. On 2 April 1809 he had gone with his elder brother, Richard, to solicit Farington’s support in persuading the Admiralty to hire him “to make complete drawings of the subjects of which the Admiralty have outlines.” This sounds as though he were trying to get paid twice, but he probably deserved it, and there was a precedent. The Admiralty had done so “in the instance of Hodges, & also of [John] Webber[;] & the Botanical draughtsman who went with William Westall is now, through the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, employed for a similar purpose in His own line, at a Salary of £200 a year.” Farington said he would mention it to Sir George Beaumont. He discussed the proposal with William Westall’s brother-in-law, William Daniell, and heard a derogatory report: Mr. Murdoch a madeira merchant offered to write an acc[oun]t of that Island for the use of William Westall, provided the latter would make a Set of drawings, views in that Island, & publish prints from them to accompany the written account. The drawings, however, which William Westall brought were made in respect of correctness of representation, subject to Will[ia]m Westall’s notion of what is picturesque, & accordingly He placed Convents w[h]ere there are none & made other alterations so unsatisfactory in respect of fidelity as to cause Mr. Murdoch’s plan to be given up. Will[ia]m Daniell remarked that W[illia]m Westall, considering the time He was absent from England, and

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the Countries He visited, made but few drawings, as He did not think of what might be interesting to the Topographer but only what would, in His opinion, “come well” [i.e., look picturesquel].69

But the Admiralty did employ Westall to convert his drawings into paintings, and Admiral King’s later testimony indicates he was able to contain his pursuit of the picturesque. In 1812 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a View from one of Seaforth’s Islands … discovered by Captain Flinders … and a View of a port on the East Coast of New South Wales … Captain Flinders. He was elected an associate member and resigned from the old Society of Painting in Water-Colours.70 In his finished paintings he was careful to insert examples of local flora into the foregrounds. Flinders’s return to England had been delayed until 1810 because, when he reached the Isle de France, he had come under suspicion and been imprisoned. William Farington told his brother that the governor had refused to honour Flinders’s passport from Napoleon for a scientific voyage because he was caught making drawings that might have intelligence importance.71 But Flinders had come under suspicion the moment he arrived in Isle de France because his passport named a different ship, and the one he was using had previously been used for intelligence purposes. There was also a clash of personalities. Flinders suffered seven years of imprisonment with such severe effects on his health that he died the day his book, A Voyage to Terra Australis, was published. In it were printed line engravings by J. Byrne, Samuel Middiman, John Pye, and W. Woolnoth based on Westall’s paintings.72 Having laid to rest his experiences in the Indian and Pacific oceans, William Westall’s only other contribution to the arts of naval victory was to be a commission to draw and engrave plates from sketches made by the officers on Captain William Edward Parry’s expedition in Hecla and Griper in 1819–20, which were published in Parry’s Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage in 1821. Apart from that, he was content to leave the field of naval pictures to his half-brother Richard, and made a name for himself as a topographical artist, spending part of his life in the Lake District.

 Whether George Webster had any official reason for visiting West Africa is not known; in fact almost nothing is known about this artist except that

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he painted some excellent pictures during his life, which spanned 1797 to 1832. In 1800 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a view of Cape Coast Castle, on the Coast of Guinea, and in 1801 he exhibited A View of Annamabee, on the Gold Coast, Africa, ‘taken on the spot’, 1799. In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a lively watercolour of A Vessel in the Surf off the African Coast.73 Webster later turned his talents to naval subjects. The National Maritime Museum has a number of his pictures, including a series of three pictures: First Rate in a Storm, A 74 in a Fresh Gale, and A Frigate in a Calm, which were engraved by Hill, and published on 8 July 1811 by G. Testolini.74 Prints from his battle pictures include His Majesty’s Sloop Bonne Citoyenne, taking the French Frigate La Furieuse in Tow after the Action of the 6th July 1809, and His Majesty’s Ships Amphion, Cerberus, Volage and Active, their situation and the Enemy’s Squadron at the time of the Blowing up of the French Commodore off the Island of Lissa in the Adriatic on the 13th March 1811. He also worked as a publisher, bringing out several engravings after pictures by John Theophilus Lee of the action between the Chesapeake and the Shannon.75 In 1825 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture of The Battle of Trafalgar. The Téméraire, 98 Guns, Captain Eliab Harvey, capturing Le Redoutable and Le Fougueux, 74 Guns each, 3 o’clock p.m., October 21st, 1805. Apparently this had been painted for the Epping Place Society, but may also have been intended to compete for the British Institution prize.76

 Quite different from Serres’s was the story of another marine drawing master twenty years his junior. John Christian Schetky’s career in the naval arts was also to be intimately connected with the daily needs of the fleet. He was an Edinburgh man born in 1778, a friend of Sir Walter Scott, and as a boy had longed to join the navy. He was able to badger his loving parents into getting his name placed on the books of hm frigate Hind in 1792, but they later got cold feet. For several generations his family had made names for themselves in the arts, and John Christian found himself following the same path. His father, Johann Georg Christian Schetky, was a Transylvanian immigrant and a noted composer. His mother, Maria Anna Teresa née Reinagle, was an artist and musician who specialized in painting miniatures. Her father, Joseph Reinagle, was a composer who had once been intended for the navy,

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Robert and Daniel Havell after George Webster, His Majesty’s Sloop Bonne Citoyenne, taking the French Frigate La Furieuse in Tow after the Action of the 6th July 1809, published by Robert Cribb and Son, n.d., 470 ⫻ 611mm, © nmm pah 8075.

and her brother, Philip Reinagle ra, was a noted landscape painter and father of the Ramsay Richard Reinagle who went into the panorama business with the Barker family. Instead of joining the navy, John Christian studied drawing. Although he worked with Alexander Nasmyth, Robert Edmund Graves, who wrote the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, felt that Schetky’s principal teachers were “nature and the works of William Van de Velde.”77 At the age of fifteen he began to help his mother give her drawing lessons. When she died two years later, he took over the classes himself. He also did some scene painting in Edinburgh. As did so many artists, Schetky took advantage of the peace being negotiated at Amiens to visit the continent. In the autumn of 1801 he and a friend set out on foot, travelling through France and Italy as far as Rome. In Paris he met Benjamin West and was disappointed by the great man: “He was a fine-looking old man, but just an old man! and I was sorry I had seen him, for I thought the great Benjamin West would have sixteen eyes and forty-five noses, or at least be bigger than other

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men.”78 In Toulon Schetky and his friend nearly got into very serious trouble sketching hm ships Berwick and Swiftsure, which had been taken prize in 1795 and 1801. But they were warned in time, and managed to slip back home just before the recommencement of the war. Schetky cut it very fine, catching one of the last packets. He settled in Oxford and in 1805 exhibited his first painting at the Royal Academy, A Frigate and a Convoy Bearing Away in a Gale of Wind. From Oxford, Schetky took a post in 1808 as junior drawing master at the Royal Military Academy at Great Marlow. He spent Christmas of 1810 at the front in Portugal with his younger brother, John Alexander Schetky, who was a medical officer and an amateur painter. John Christian’s daughter Ludmilla later recorded the family story that her father had nearly missed his crossing in hm frigate Amelia. Seeing her already under sail, he leapt into a wherry and helped “the boatmen in pulling after her with all the strength of his long and powerful arms.” As they drew nearer, he stood up in the bows waving his handkerchief tied to the end of his stick, and sent a long ringing “Ship ahoy!” along the waters of Spithead, till out of every porthole came an officer’s head to see what was the matter; and then, as he was recognised, an answering shout, “What! Schetky! Going to the wars? Here, come on board, man! we’ll find you a berth, and delighted to have you. Mr. So-andso, have the goodness to heave to and take Mr. Schetky on board.” Then the hoarse order of the boatswain to back sail, &c, sounded in the anxious ears of the pursuer; and so, with Peter [his dog] at his heels, he soon stood on the spot dearest to him in all the world – the quarterdeck of an English man-ofwar – receiving the hearty greetings of her gallant officers.79

He had been exhibiting watercolours at the Associated Artists in WaterColours, formerly the “New Society,” from 1808, and in 1811 he exhibited his paintings there along with those his brother had made in the Pyrenees. Amongst these may have been a graphite and watercolour picture of the Rock of Gibraltar with several warships, which is now in the keeping of the National Maritime Museum.80 In that year Schetky took up the post of drawing master at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, where he was to spend most of his professional career until 1836, when the college was closed. One of his former students, Admiral A.H. Becher, who was to become Assistant Hydro-

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grapher to the Admiralty, had fond reminiscenses of that period: “He brought us a new state of things altogether … We were never allowed outside the dockyard gates before he came: but he looked up the college boat directly, and got permission to take us out sketching – and such jolly expeditions as we used to have all along the coast there! … A fine tall fellow he was, with all the manners and appearance of a sailor – always dressed in navy-blue, and carried his call, and used to pipe us to weigh anchor, and so on, like any boatswain in the service.”81 He was a consummate sailor and waterman, and on one notable occasion he rowed an eight-foot dingy with a broken oar home from a party in Southampton in a long night of heavy fog. I got on fast enough for a while by the town lights, and then those of the craft moored off Southampton and Netley; but when I got lower down towards the sea, it was awkward enough, for there was nothing to guide me – not a star to be seen, not a sound to be heard, the air was so thick and foggy. However, I knew Southampton Water as well as the High Street of Portsmouth – every shoal and current of it, and so – safely, though very slowly, I reached the mouth of the Solent. Then I got a little anxious, for the tide was running out fast, and if I had once drifted out to sea, I could not have made the shore that night with my one oar; so I kept the broken oar on the land side, and rowed close along shore, so as never to lose the sound of the surf, which was my only guide.82

Schetky eventually landed safely at the Custom House. Poverty later made it necessary for him to sell his boat, but his friends could not accept the situation, and the College of Naval Architects built him a little cutter-rigged yacht, which he named Lufra as a literary compliment to his old friend Sir Walter Scott. In the world before photography, the work of teaching naval officers how to draw was necessary, and Schetky brought to his own painting a real love of, and understanding of, ships. It is an interesting consideration that his quick sketches were extremely primitive, indeed childlike. His more finished sketches, on the other hand, have tremendous grace and life. His major works are at their best very considerable contributions to the arts of naval victory. A sketchbook is preserved at the National Maritime Museum, as well as a number of graphite and watercolour sketches.83 Among the latter is a pair made from a model of the Royal George dated October 1839, and a sketch from life dated 7 November

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John Christian Schetky, H.M.S. Odin, 74 guns, captured from the Danish in 1807, at anchor in Portsmouth Harbour, watercolour with soft ground etching, 131 ⫻ 216mm, © nmm pad 9418.

1839 of the capstan that had been recovered from the wreck.84 The watercolour paintings were technically rather old-fashioned, being in the traditional eighteenth-century pen line and wash, but in their simplicity they are very beautiful studies of the warships he loved. One of his most attractive pictures, a small watercolour over a soft ground etching, is a stern view of H.M.S. Odin, … captured from the Danish in 1807.85 He also turned his hand to portraiture, sketching in 1823 James Park Esqr. Late First Master-Attendant of His Majesty’s Dockyard, Portsmouth, and he executed a series of shipboard scenes.86 Schetky had all the capacity for human relations that Serres lacked. In 1819 some of his work was brought to the attention of the Prince Regent, later King George IV, and this led to his appointment the next

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year as Painter in Watercolour. Later, George IV was to make him Marine Painter in Ordinary in Serres’s place – apparently without officially informing Serres. His connections at court led Schetky to associate with the rich and famous. During his years at Portsmouth he was an honourary member of the mess of hms Victory. He accompanied King George on his visit to Ireland in 1821, and it was Schetky who got the passage to Scotland in 1822 for the State visit that Serres had asked for. To commemorate the occasion, he drew a lively picture of the Reembarkation of His Majesty King George 4th at Leith 1822. Boatloads of gents and pretty ladies are shown being rowed out to the waiting ships. A print that W. Bennett engraved of the picture was published in 1823.87 In 1827 Schetky was finally married to Charlotte Trevenen, whom he had met nine years earlier when he had taken it as a matter of course that a squire’s daughter would never marry a poor drawing master. She was to be everything to him, and to his career; the contrast with Olivia Serres could not have been greater. The appointment as Marine Painter was to be confirmed on the accession of William IV in 1830, and on that of Queen Victoria in 1844. In that same year Schetky also met and became a close friend of the Duke of Rutland. By then the school at Portsmouth had closed and Schetky was working at the Military College at Addiscombe, but this did not put an end to his naval connections. On 18 October of that year, when King Louis Philippe visited Portsmouth, he accompanied the Queen and court in the review of the fleet. When Victoria had difficulties with her own drawings of ships, she was glad to have as agreeable a fellow artist as Schetky to whom she could appeal for help. He finished two large paintings of the subject. King George IV had been pleased with Schetky’s drawings from the state visit to Ireland, but according to his daughter, these were never published as prints because of “the unpopularity of marine subjects in the art world of Great Britain.” Those from the state visit to Scotland were printed, but “not in a very satisfactory style.” Schetky did not command strong reviews from the critics. One of the few notices appeared in the Art Union’s review of the 1843 Royal Academy exhibition, in which Schetky had placed a painting of A British Man-of-War hard and fast on the Rocks. The critic sarcastically commented that “the vessel is on the rocks, but not in such weather nor in such a sea as will justify her officers under trial by court martial.” He continued: “There is in the

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water a hardness destructive of motion and transparency, and the sky accompanying the scene should have worn a very different aspect.”88 Schetky’s most important picture was probably his large oil painting of the Loss of the Royal George, which he completed in 1840. It was purchased when still on the easel and incomplete by his brother-in-law the Reverend Edward Trevenen, and is now the property of the Tate Gallery.89 An interesting watercolour of unknown date in the collection at the British Museum is his painting of The Wreck of H.M.S. Anson, on the Bar of Loe Pool, Cornwall … with a wrecked frigate near shore.90 The wreck occurred on the 29 December 1807, but Schetky often returned to subjects years after the event. In 1856 he undertook four pictures of the action between hms Shannon and uss Chesapeake, which had taken place on 1 of June 1813. The four were commissioned by Sir George Broke Middleton, to replace four fading watercolours that Captain Sir Philip Broke had commissioned after his successful action. These had been made into black and white lithographs and published in 1830, but Broke wanted new paintings.91 As late as 1871, three years before his death, Schetky exhibited at the Royal Academy a picture of Endymion rescuing a French man of war. This incident, which he had repeatedly painted, had occurred in 1807. Between 1839 and 1863 Schetky sent twenty-two paintings to hang in the Royal Scottish Academy annual exhibitions, the majority of which were of naval subjects.92 In 1867 Schetky published a book: Reminiscences of the Veterans of the Sea. A Series of photographs illustrative of the British Navy of bygone times from the professional works of J.C. Schetky, Marine Painter in Ordinary to Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen. He supplied a preface, and even designed the letterpress for the book, which is in effect a retrospective of his best naval pictures. The early photography gives only an indifferent record, but enough can be seen to testify to the quality of his work. Unfortunately, the British Library’s copy of the book was destroyed in the Second World War, but there is a copy in the Caird Library of the National Maritime Museum. Although Schetky was clearly attracted to the ships and events of the past, his was not nostalgia painting as it would be for a twentieth-century artist because the old ships were still around him to be sketched from life. Perhaps Schetky is most remembered for his generosity to his colleagues. In 1817, apparently without asking a fee, he provided Thomas Whitcombe with a sketch of the Engagement between His Majesty’s Ship

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Amelia … and L’Arethuse. Whitcombe finished it into a picture, which Thomas Sutherland engraved and James Jenkins published.93 When Turner was working on his 1823 version of the Battle of Trafalgar, he wrote to Schetky asking him to make some sketches of hms Victory.94 Another sort of generosity was evident when Schetky himself asked Clarkson Stanfield to finish the clouds over the Wreck of the Royal George because he did not think he could do that detail as well, and wanted the picture to be perfect. Stanfield had promised to paint a picture for Schetky, but that offer was sacrificed in return for the help he received. Schetky’s daughter wrote that he valued friendship above all. “On one occasion, when a proposed competition for a commission to paint an important naval subject had set all the marine artists in a flame of enthusiasm and ambition, one of them came to my father in despair at the idea of entering the lists against him. ‘Oh, Schetky! You’re not going in for this, are you? I’m done for if you do! Do let me have a chance.’ And rather than injure his friend he retired from the field, and lent the other his sketches.”95 It is tempting to think that it might have been Serres who made the appeal, but if so, his appeal was in vain; Schetky did contribute a picture of the Battle of Trafalgar to the British Institution competition.

Eight Pa i n t e r s o f t h e S e a

In his Observations made during a Voyage Round the World published in 1778 following his return from Cook’s second expedition, the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, father of George Forster, wrote about the importance of observation of the colour of the sea: Wherever there is an extensive bank or shoal, there the colour of the seawater is changed; but even this is subject to many exceptions; sometimes we find places which are amazingly clear, and the ground, at the depth of several fathoms, may be seen plainly … sometimes the sea assumes a grey hue, and seems turbid, as if it had lost its limpidity. But often you are deceived by the situation of the sky and clouds. Dark, cloudy weather involves likewise the whole ocean in a grey hue. A serene and clear sky tinges the waves with the finest berylline or blueish-green colour. If a cloud appears, it gives to a spot of the sea a hue quite different from the rest; and, if not well attended to, often alarms the navigator with the fear of soundings or even shoals. A judicious eye, conduced by long experience, can alone distinguish properly in these cases.1

Almost every naval painting has a seascape for its background, but William Hodges had been exceptional in his efforts to accurately represent meteorological and marine detail. The Van de Veldes in the seventeenth century had been accomplished painters of the sea, but the English school had not continued that study. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that artists in Britain began again to attach much importance to painting the sea. Seascapes found a place in the world of the arts as part of the discovery of landscape, which in Britain can be dated from the middle of the century when Richard Wilson abandoned his career in portraiture. It is possible that the increasing importance and self-consciousness of the middle classes in

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the later eighteenth century lay behind the re-evaluation of nature. A largely landless class came to value land for more than its economic potential.2 Nature, having been a nuisance to be tamed, became an attribute of the divine. The characteristics of landscape which led it to play a role in the pursuit of the “sublime” were recognized as its vastness, its threatening crags, and also its representation of the life-giving forces, and of home. The sea is the quintessential expression of the vastness of nature, but until the very end of the eighteenth century its representation in English naval pictures had tended to be severely conventionalized. The value systems used subconsciously in the interpretation of nature are essential if the cognitive part of the brain is not to be swamped with visual stimulus, but they are also controls on perception which require courage, honesty, and application to overcome. The famous instance of the perception of nature being distorted by the habits of mind is that of the galloping horse. Until photography forced a re-evaluation, artistic representation of galloping horses habitually depicted them as in flight with all four legs splayed and bent. Similar conventions influenced perception of the sea and sky. Most painting of the sea lacked even the artificial interest of the picturesque, being utterly conventionalized. Ruskin particularized in his apologia for the work of J.M.W. Turner, Modern Painters: “The water painting of all the elder landscape painters, excepting a few of the better passages of Claude and Ruysdael, is so execrable, so beyond all expression and explanation bad; and Claude’s and Ruysdael’s best so cold and valueless, that I do not know how to address those who like such painting; I do not know what their sensations are respecting sea.”3 The Reverend Stanier Clarke said that the article on “Marine Scenery” in the first volume of the Naval Chronicle in 1799 had been “first suggested by the observation of an eminent Painter; who, on hearing the uniformity of the view at sea complained of, replied, ‘The uniformity exists in the mind of the beholder: if he does not possess a soul sufficiently enlarged to feel the sublimity and endless variety of such a scene, he should daily endeavour to awaken a sense within him, which either the force of habit has closed, or the want of a discriminating taste has never called forth.’”4 The descriptions of the sea that the author of “Marine Scenery” worked up during a cruise from Torbay in the Western Squadron under the command of Admiral Lord Bridport can be said to mark, if not necessarily to have inspired, the transformation of English marine painting by J.M.W. Turner and his followers.

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The gradual rising of a gale of wind, the term by which sailors denote a storm, which is entirely banished from the Naval Vocabulary, and is only used on shore, has much of the sublime. The preceding calm is treacherous and deceitful. A water sun-set proclaims what may be expected. During the night it is heard gradually collecting its strength. If not attended with rain, a great sea is soon formed. Like an immense ridge, it slowly moves in dreadful grandeur along; and, as if it rose out of the deep, in proportion as the magnitude is increased by its approach, seems to threaten instant destruction. Suddenly it sinks under the keel of the ship, which falls into a trough of the sea, made by the receding of such a mountain, [and] seems almost thrown on her beam ends. As the ship gradually rights, the billow rushes on the other side with incredible force, whilst its curling and extended ridge is covered with foam. On the 3rd of November I observed the Sun-rise with a fixed continued attention. A bright effusion of orange, deepning into a variety of tints, was the resplendent harbinger of its approach. The sea, almost a calm, had lost a little of that dark blue tinge, which a continuance of easterly winds had given to its surface. A ship of the line, with much sail set, was in the Offing immediately before me. A considerable part of the fleet, nearly becalmed, at a still greater distance, were standing off to the left, under a thick grey haze, and formed an interesting group in perspective. A bright crimson was now observed to skirt, in horizontal lines, the clouds immediately above the spot, where the first rays of the sun seemed to be emerging from the deep; yet at present no part of this luminary was visible, but still seemed to repose in the bosom of Ocean, sending forth fresh effusions of light: by degrees the various reflections of light appeared to contract, and became considerably brighter. Some brilliant, yet broken rays, now shot upwards on the firmament, and immediately disappeared; but the stream of light, that issued from the waves, was brilliant beyond conception: – when, on a sudden, a large globe of pure pale fire arose in an instant from the deep, and vanished into air; and then burst forth the Lord of day in all his glory.

The author of “Marine Scenery” turned to some of the particular faults he had observed: “We seldom, in sea pieces, observe that effect sufficiently noticed, which ships afford when it blows rather hard. You, for a time, discern only the sails of the ship, all the hull seems buried in the waves.” “The out-spreading of the salt foam, like the striated shades in marble, is too often omitted by marine painters: it gives a great variety and life to the picture, and adds much to the correctness of any design. A ship not only throws up the foam with her keel ahead, but flings

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it out boldly at her sides, and leaves the sea covered with it to a considerable distance astern.” A November night, with rising winds, gave the author another view of sunset at sea, and another dawn. The sun had just given its parting rays, and the last shades of day already lingered on the distant waves, when a sky most sublime and threatening attracted our notice. It was carefully provided against by the officers on the watch. To the verge of the horizon, except where the sun had left some portion of its departing rays, a dark, lowering, blue expanse, presented itself to our notice. On this floated light yellow clouds, tinged with the various colours of evening, the never failing forerunners of a Gale. A strong tint was reflected from them on the shrouds and rigging, which rendered the scene more dreadful. The calm of the sea was portentous. The sea-bird shrieked as it passed! As the tempest gradually approached, the thick darkness of night closed the whole in horrid uncertainty: “It was a dismal and fearful night; And on my soul hung the dull weight Of some intolerable fate!” (Cowley) Being on deck soon after day-break, on the 6th of November, I observed a different effect in the sun-rise, from any before noticed … It was hazy to windward of us, and in this haze the Sun was rising. Its light was not sufficiently powerful to overcome the haze, and therefore appeared pale and emaciated; the prevailing colour was a faint tinge of orange, but so dimmed, as hardly to be noticed. After a short time, wide streaks of orange darted across the horizon, and marked its gradual ascent: it was then seen to emerge from the upper edge of the haze, and, as if making a final effort for liberty, that part of the sun which appeared seemed to blaze, whilst the remainder of its Orb slowly followed with its lustre dimmed. The globular form of the Sun was now entirely lost, and, as it were, transfused into a pale stream of flame, continuing for some minutes between the horizon and a line of heavy clouds; which, as the day advanced, had overcast the greater part of the sky. These gradually became skirted with its light: when, as if the Sun made a final effort to recover its splendor, it suddenly cast a bold silvery glow, which I had never before witnessed in a sun-rise, on the surrounding clouds, and then sinking into their fleecy bosoms, separated the whole mass into different fantastic shapes: “… with various ray, Lights up the clouds, those beauteous robes of heaven,

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Incessant roll’d into romantic shapes, The dream of waking fancy!” (Thomson.) The situation of the fleet at this moment was well adapted to form an interesting design: two frigates, a fire-ship, and a cutter, appeared in the haze, who had been all night looking out to windward. The Royal George, Lord Bridport’s flag, had wore, having the signal up for the rest to follow on that tack. The Neptune, Sir Roger Curtis, which was the first ship on the lee line, was already about: the remainder of the fleet prepared to wear in succession.

Ruskin would not have agreed with the author of the Naval Chronicle article that professional sailors, by virtue of their trade, were necessarily the best observers of the appearance of the sea, let alone capable of its representation in paint. The painters, however, had been slow to develop their art. Reynolds, in his advice to Pocock on his marine painting, had written in 1780: All the parts separately are extremely well painted; but there wants a harmony in the whole together; there is no union between the clouds, the sea, and the sails. Though the sea appears sometimes as green as you have painted it, yet it is a choice very [un]favourable to the art: it seems to me absolutely necessary in order to produce harmony, and that the picture should appear to be painted as the phrase is, from one palette, that those three great objects of shippainting should be very much of the same colour as was the practice of Van Der Velde [sic] and he seems to be driven to his conduct by necessity. Whatever colour predominates in a picture, that colour must be introduced in other parts; but no green colour, such as you have given to the sea, can make a part of a sky. I believe the truth is, that, however the sea may appear green, when you are looking down on it, and it is very near – at such a distance as your ships are supposed to be, it assumes the colour of the sky. I would recommend to you, above all things, to paint from nature instead of drawing; to carry your palette and pencils to the water side. This was the practice of Vernet, whom I knew in Rome; he then shewed me his studies in colours, which struck me very much for that truth which those works only have which are produced while the impression is warm from nature; at that time he was a perfect master of the character of water, if I may use the expression, he is now reduced to a mere mannerist, and no longer to be recommended for imitation, except you would imitate him by uniting landscape to ship-painting, which certainly makes a more pleasing composition than either alone.5

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To a degree, Reynolds was contradicting himself in advising Pocock to work from nature but then to impose a rhetoric of colour based on principles rather than observation. But Pocock was not the man to object. In a letter of February 1804 to Richard Bright of Bristol, mentioned in chapter 2, he wrote a description of his painting technique which suggests that he viewed his work as being more of a craft than would satisfy most present-day artists. I have inclos’d a Sketch of Scales of tones produced with 3 Colours only which are sufficient to produce any colour or effect whatever – the Sketch of boats is done as follows – the Cloud first with light red and blue only, the Water the Same with a little blue added to it, the Same pencil [i.e., brush] just touch’d on the yellow oker for the nearest wave, the near vessell blue and red, with rather more red than in the sky, it is the most Aerial tint, and any colouring may be wrought upon it, with great Clearness and force. When I send the drawing I shall add a few more Observations and a colour or two more which may be used to advantage, but the Simple Colours here used produce the Cleanest and most natural effect, besides having the Advantage of being easily remembered – if the drawing intended to be colour’d is small, the Paper after the outline is traced upon it may be wetted well on both sides then laid on the Carpet or a green baize Cloth (not upon a bare table or board) untill the water is so much absorb’d, or that the paper appears dry – yet retaining a considerable degree of dampness – in this State you may begin to colour upon it especially such a Subject, as the drawing you mention the misty clouds exhaling, are produced by a large brush dipp’d in the water (without colour) and squeez’d between the finger and thumb; it will in this dry state Soften the Edges of the Clouds and vary the forms at pleasure by taking off the Colour from the mountain or Sky wherever Fancy may chose to exercise itself.6

Despite this formulistic approach, Pocock’s seascapes had a contemporary following. Mary Hartley had expressed her opinion to Gilpin in 1789 that Pocock’s “chief attention is to produce a fine effect of light and shade; & the motion of the waves in his drawings is so inimitable, that you would be astonished to see it.”7 Serres’s Liber Nauticus, published in 1804, did nothing to address the need for a new vision for painting the sea. His text for the plate on “studies for water” was hardly very helpful: “In order to represent water in a calm or tranquil state, every object floating on it, or situated by its banks, must be tenderly reflected as in a mirror; and even the clouds in

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the sky, if well composed, assist in relieving the objects so reflected, while they make addition to its transparency. With respect to water in a troubled state, every thing depends on the variety in the form of the waves; and as there cannot be any regular rule or proportion laid down for the student, it gives fine scope for the fertility of invention.”8 The plate itself showed the surface of the sea affected by a breeze and in a brisk gale, but failed to make it look like water. Haydon’s account of his 1809 voyage to Plymouth is highly descriptive and catches in words what he was incapable of expressing in paint. Evening approached, the Sun set, and as we wafted with the breeze, the Moon, apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, and glittered on the sails of the distant shipping. Every thing now seemed hushed, except the rippling and bubbling of the waters as we gently divided them … As we passed through the Needles, every Soul was on Deck, and I could perceive, as they faded from us, the Star-like glimmer of the distant light house. I now retired to the cabin and stretching myself on the seat, wrapped up in signal flags, while Wilkie crept into [one of] their cupboard beds. Every three hours I heard the Whistle for a fresh watch and the measured step of the Master, as he walked the deck over my head, approach and die away at intervals. Sometimes he would stop and mutter something to the men, which the wind carried from me, and would again begin his occupation. Notwithstanding the creaking noises, I soon slumbered imperceptibly away, and when I awoke, went instantly upon Deck and found the Master still in silence, pacing, muffled up. I shivered. The day was just breaking, the moon fading, and with lurid, liquid, trembling agitation, glittered the star of morn. There was a strong dewy breeze, and as I looked towards the north, I saw the white cliffs of Portland, standing as it were, alone & solitary, braving the dashing surge. Nothing could be more poetical. Every thing Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, & Virgil had said of morning rushed into my fancy, and put me in such a tumult of feeling as thrilled to my very soul. The beauties of day break, of Sun rise & Sun set, are certainly never felt with such exquisite acuteness on shore as at Sea; every thing here conspires to excite sentiment. You feel shut out from the world in a solitary little vessel. You feel attached to the crew. You would spend your life with them. The immense ocean around you, with not a being visible on it but yourself, excites a melancholy awe, which renders you more liable to impression than when you are distracted by the cares & anxieties, the hum and bustle of the land.

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In the extreme distance, as I turned round, I perceived our companion, the transport, silently drifting on the dark blue Sea, while the dewy light of day lit up her sails like a vision. There was something cheering in this; I never saw the sublime & the beautiful so imperceptibly intermingled.9

Writing in 1848, nearly forty-four years later, Ruskin devoted fiftyfive pages in Modern Painters to description of the problem of painting the sea, and to methods of meeting it. His descriptions of the sea are those of a painter – and art critic – rather than a sailor’s: The visible transparency and reflective power of water are in inverse ratio. In looking down into it from above, we receive transmitted rays which exhibit either the bottom, or the objects floating in the water; or else if the water be deep and clear, we receive very few rays, and the water looks black. In looking along water we receive reflected rays, and therefore the image of objects above it. Hence, in shallow water on a level shore the bottom is seen at our feet, clearly; it becomes more and more obscure as it retires, even though the water do not increase in depth, and at a distance of twelve or twenty yards – more or less according to our height above the water – becomes entirely invisible, lost in the lustre of the reflected surface. Second: the brighter the objects reflected, the larger the angle at which reflection is visible … It will be found on observation that under a bank – suppose with dark trees above showing spaces of bright sky, the bright sky is reflected distinctly … but in the dark spaces of reflection we see the bottom of the water, and the color of that bottom and of the water itself mingles with and modifies that of the color of the trees casting the dark reflection. . . . It is easy to obtain the resemblance of broken running water by tricks and dexterities, but the sea must be legitimately drawn; it cannot be given as utterly disorganized and confused, its weight and mass must be expressed … The right painting of the sea must depend, at least in all coast scenery, in no small measure on the power of drawing foam. Yet there are two conditions of foam of invariable occurrence on breaking waves, of which I have never seen the slightest record attempted; first the thick creamy curdling overlapping massy foam which remains for a moment only after the fall of the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running up the beach; and secondly, the thin white coating into which this subsides, which opens into oval gaps and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore by long dragging streams of white. It is evident that the difficulty of expressing either of these two conditions

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must be immense. The lapping and curdling foam is difficult enough to catch even when the lines of its undulation alone are considered; but the lips, so to speak, which lie along these lines, are full, projecting, and marked by beautiful light and shade; each has its high light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable delicacy, a bright reflected light and a dark cast shadow; to draw all this requires labour, and care, and firmness of work … Again, as respects the form of breakers on an even shore, there is difficulty of no less formidable kind. There is in them an irreconcilable mixture of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface is marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonderful intricacy its curve being at the same time necessarily of mathematical purity and precision; at the top of this curve, when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and give way, the water swings and jumps along the ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from part to part as it does through a serpent’s body. Then the wind is at work on the extreme edge, and instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it supports it, and drives it back, or scrapes it off, and carries it bodily away; so that the spray at the top is in a continual transition between forms projected by their own weight, and forms blown and carried off with their weight overcome; then at last, when it has come down, who shall say what shape that may be called, which shape has none of the great crash where it touches the beach. I think it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster. Nobody can do anything with it … Afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a totally different impression. Every wave around us appears vast – every one different from all the rest – and the breakers present, now that we see them with their backs towards us, the grand, extended, and varied lines of long curvature, which are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power. Recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the mad, perpetual, changeful, undirected motion, not of wave after wave, as it appears from the shore, but of the very same water rising and falling. Of waves that successively approach and break, each appears to the mind a separate individual, whose part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by another … The sensation of power is also trebled; for not only is the vastness of apparent size much increased, but the whole action is different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily forward until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach, but a sweeping exertion of tremendous and living strength, which does not now appear to fall, but to burst upon the shore; which never perishes, but recoils and recovers.10

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J.M.W. Turner, Sketch of a Ship in a Storm,

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By the time Ruskin wrote Modern Painters, Turner was nearing the end of his life, and although he was in many ways a voice crying in the wilderness of Victorian painting, he had effected a revolution in painting the sea. It is doubtful whether the camera would have helped Turner and the other radical artists of the sea because the camera’s instantaneous, single-point perspective is notoriously inadequate for recording the essential transience of the sea. It took Turner’s genius to catch in paint, not an instantaneous impression, but a sense of evanescent energy, and Clarkson Stanfield to define with precision what Turner had shown impressionistically.

Nine Jo s e p h Ma l l o r d Wi l l i a m Tur n e r

The French watercolour artist Eugène Delacroix wrote in his journal that he remembered meeting J.M.W. Turner just once, in his studio on the Quai Voltaire, where he had lived between January 1829 and October 1835. “He made only a middling impression on me: he had the look of an English farmer, black coat of a rather coarse type, thick shoes – and a cold, hard face.” 1 Robert Leslie, son of the academician Charles Robert Leslie who was one of the American artists working in London and Constable’s biographer, visited Turner’s study frequently as a child and watched Turner paint at the Academy. He remembers Turner in the 1830s as always wearing “an old, tall beaver hat, worn rather off his forehead, which added much to his look of a North Sea pilot.”2 In 1834 Turner gave him “an early lesson in seamanship by rigging scraps of paper, torn from his sketch-book, upon three little sticks stuck in a bit of board to represent a full-rigged ship, which to my great delight, he then launched upon the lake.”3 Robert’s younger brother George wrote in 1850 that Turner “always had the indescribable charm of the sailor both in appearance and manners; his large grey eyes were those of a man long accustomed to looking straight at the face of nature through fair and foul weather alike.”4 Ruskin had been stirred while still a student at Oxford to the defence of Turner, but did not meet him for the first time until 1840. He recorded his impressions in his diary: Introduced to-day to the man who beyond all doubt is the greatest of the age; greatest in every faculty of the imagination, in every branch of scenic knowledge; at once the painter and poet of the day, J.M.W. Turner. Everybody had described him to me as coarse, boorish, unintellectual, vulgar. This I knew to

Charles Turner, Joseph Mallord William Turner, chalk, 1842, npg 1182.

George Richmond, John Ruskin, chalk, c. 1843, npg 1058.

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be impossible. I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matterof-fact, English-minded gentleman: good-humoured evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of his mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or a look.5

When, a few years after Turner’s death, Walter Thornbury set out to write his biography, Ruskin encouraged him, and urged him to be clear about his intent. “Fix at the beginning the following main characteristics of Turner in your mind, as the keys to the secret of all he said and did: Uprightness, Generosity, Tenderness of heart (extreme), Sensuality, Obstinacy (extreme), Irritability, Infidelity. And be sure that he knew his own power, and felt himself utterly alone in the world from its [i.e., his?] not being understood. Don’t try to mask the dark side.”6 Turner was a solitary figure whose family life had been severely damaged by the growing insanity of a mother who had eventually to be hospitalized. His father was a barber, who recognized his son’s genius. Ruskin described the scene: “Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden Lane. Through a low archway to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see on the left hand a narrow door, which formerly gave quiet access to a respectable barber’s shop, of which the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, is still extant.”7 As might be expected, Turner’s father was only able to provide him with a scrappy early education. He was able to arrange informal drawing lessons because his barber shop was frequented by artists and because, like many barbers, he sold prints as well as coiffed hair. William, as he was called in his youth, was later sent to study perspective under the architectural artist Thomas Malton, followed apparently by a period apprenticed to a mezzotint engraver, John Raphael Smith. There, he was set to work colouring engravings with Thomas Girtin, who had also grown up in London poverty and was to be considered the foremost watercolourist of urban subjects before his death in 1802. Turner’s father then found the resources to send his son to work with the church architect Thomas Hardwick.8

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Edward Dayes had been Girtin’s teacher and may have provided Turner with some instruction. He wrote of Turner in his Professional Sketches that “Highly to the credit of this artist, he is indebted principally to his own exertions for the abilities which he possesses as a painter, and for the respectable position that he holds in society. He may be considered as a striking instance of how much may be gained by industry, if accompanied with temperance, even without the assistance of a master. The man must be loved for his works; for his person is not striking, nor his conversations brilliant.” But Dayes also noted, as early as 1805, that “His handling is sometimes unfirm, and the objects are too indefinite: he appears, indeed, to have but a superficial notion of form.”9 Turner became a student at the Royal Academy in 1789 when he was only fourteen, and worked in Reynolds’s studio. Ruskin was highly critical of the academy’s influence: “Turner, having suffered under the instruction of the Royal Academy, had to pass nearly thirty years of his life in recovering from its consequences … It carefully repressed his perceptions of truth, his capacities of invention, and his tendencies of choice. For him it was impossible to do right but in the spirit of defiance; and the first condition of his progress in learning, was the power to forget.”10 Turner, however, retained a lifelong respect for Reynolds and for the priority he gave to the mind over the emotions in his work. During their student days Turner and Girtin both received encouragement and support from Dr Thomas Monro, a psychiatrist who ran a work club in his home in the evenings. He provided dinner for his young friends – and paid a small fee – in return for drawing work. Farington recorded the circumstances in his diary: “Turner and Girtin told us they had been employed by Dr. Monro 3 years to draw at his house in the evening. They went at 6 and staid till ten. Girtin drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects. They had been chiefly employed in copying the outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens, &c &c of which copies they made finished drawings. Dr. Monro allowed Turner 3s6d each night. Girtin did not say what he had. – Turner afterwards told me that Dr. Monro had been a materiel friend to him, as well as to Girtin.”11 Turner never married, possibly because he was afraid of marriage after watching his father suffer from his mother’s illness. Robert Leslie wrote that he met an old woman in Margate who recalled that “Turner used to visit friends of theirs there, to see a young lady to whom he was then engaged to be married. The old ladies took no interest in Turner the

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artist and spoke of him only as a poor delicate youth, who was not expected to live long, and said that the young lady’s relations wished the engagement broken off on that account.”12 He was later to have two enduring relationships, both with widows, but he kept his mistresses very private. There survives almost no reference to his first, Sarah Danby, and little of his friend of old age, Sophia Caroline Booth. Sarah was the widow of John Danby, who was a gleemaker. She may have come into Turner’s life through a young disciple of his, Augustus Wall Callcott, whose brother John would have known John Danby as a fellow gleemaker. She bore Turner two children, and she may have helped him professionally with the music for one of his performance creations. There is a story that Sarah would prepare Turner’s palette for him, and that he would complain about her inadequacy in doing so, but even if true such a story would be a terribly inadequate basis for any discussion of his relationship with her.13 Sarah moved out after the birth of Turner’s second child, perhaps because the relationship was beginning to complicate her receipt of a pension from the Musicians Society.14 Turner seems to have provided nothing for his daughters, Evelina and Georgiana. Sophia Booth was a widow who took in lodgers near the seafront at Margate. She was twenty-five years younger than Turner. It apparently suited Turner to keep Margate and London lives separate, and Sophia seems to have been able to live on her inheritance and demand little of Turner but his friendship. In 1846 she moved to Chelsea and Turner moved in with her, but kept his residence entirely secret from his friends. At his death he had been living with Sophia for eighteen years and she claimed that he had never contributed to their expenses. Turner acquired a reputation for miserliness, to which his unwillingness to support his families would have added, had it been generally known. He was known to be mean in his payment of the engravers who worked for him. He managed to save so much money from his sales that when he died his estate amounted to the enormous sum of £140,000. But there are also instances of Turner providing moral and practical support to fellow artists, even helping the less experienced to execute difficult parts of their compositions. Clara Wells, daughter of William Frederick Wells the watercolour painter, remembered: There was more hidden good and worth in his character than the world could imagine; he had a tender, affectionate heart, such as few possess … I know he

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gave ungrudgingly, but he was no boaster of good deeds. Another trait of character, which ought to be named, is the liberality with which he viewed the works of other artists; if he could not speak a word of praise, he carefully abstained from giving any opinion. I never heard him utter a syllable of dispraise of any artist. Though thoroughly modest and unpretending, yet he had a full appreciation of his own merits, and no one so much enjoyed his exquisite pictures as he did himself.15

Turner claimed Girtin’s friendship “to the last, although they,” apparently friends of Girtin’s who believed Turner to be a dangerous rival, “tried to separate us.” Turner is supposed to have generously asserted: “If Girtin had lived, I should have starved.”16 Edward Edwards wrote of Girtin’s death in November 1802 at the age of twenty-seven that “intemperance and irregularity have no claim to longevity.” How much Turner may have participated in the “irregularities” is not known. For that matter, Henry Fuseli, who was elected the Academy’s Professor of Painting in 1810, dismissed Edwards’s peevish remark as only to “be forgiven to his [i.e., Edwards’s] own rigid morals, and long habits of self-denial.”17 The Quarterly Review, in its notice of the posthumous publication of a second volume of Edwards’s Anecdotes of Painters, commented: “The bodily infirmities, and narrow circumstances of Mr. Edwards, secured him from the commission of many of those indiscretions which he has so severely reprehended in others. This should have led him to speak with some charity of those who, fortunately, or unfortunately, laboured not under his restraints. But the heart of Mr. Edwards did not overflow with ‘the milk of human kindness.’”18 Turner’s father, also named William, shared his life, and managed his private gallery until his death in 1829. Apart from him, it was the Royal Academy, to which Turner was first elected as an associate in 1799, that was his true family. The “varnishing days,” which could stretch to a week during which exhibitors did the final touching up of their canvasses, were important parts of Turner’s social life.19 By the turn of the nineteenth century Turner was established in his profession, with a strong reputation for his landscape pictures, a growing success with history themes, and several remarkable sea pieces to his credit. In 1797, when only twenty-four, he exhibited a marine at the Academy, Fishermen coming ashore at Sunset previous to a Gale, which was widely acclaimed.20 Williams, alias Anthony Pasquin, was for once impressed. Writing for the Morning Post, he said:

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We have no knowledge of Mr. Turner but through the medium of his works, which assuredly reflect great credit upon his endeavours. The present picture is an undeniable proof of the possession of genius and judgment and, what is uncommon in his age, it partakes but very little of the manner of any other master. He seems to view nature and her operations with a peculiar vision, and that singularity of perception is so adroit that it enables him to give a transparency and undulation to the sea more perfect than is usually seen on canvas. He has a grace and boldness in the disposition of his tints and handling which sweetly deceive the sense, and we are inclined to approve him the more as all our marine painters have too servilely followed the steps of each other, and given us pictures more like japanned teaboards with ships and boats on a smooth and glossy surface, than adequate representations of that unconstant, boisterous and ever changing element.

The Times wrote that “Turner had undertaken to paint the sickly appearance of the setting sun at sea, preparatory to a gale, and in this he has succeeded in an astonishing manner. We never beheld a piece of the kind possessing more imagination or exciting more awe and sympathy in the spectators.”21 Turner’s attempt to obtain election to an associate membership in the Academy was turned down, both that year and the next, partly because he was too young. Evidently he felt it might be useful to touch base with Farington, who recorded in his diary on 24 October 1798: “Turner has called. He talked to me about his present situation. He said that by continuing to reside at his Father’s he benefitted him and his mother: but he thought he might derive advantages from placing himself in a more respectable situation – He said he had more commissions at present than he could execute and got more money than he expended. The advice I gave him was to continue in his present situation till he had laid aside a few hundred pounds.”22 Turner’s exhibition at the Academy in 1799 again received very strong reviews, and Farington assured him that his election as an associate of the Royal Academy was a certainty. Apart from being an honour, election would significantly increase the demand for Turner’s pictures, and the prices he could charge. Having been duly elected by ten votes to three, he was able to set up on his own in rented rooms in Harley Street.23 He was put out to find that Serres had arranged to use adjacent rooms as a studio during the day. Probably Turner was concerned by the reputation of Olivia, which resonated only too closely with his own experiences with his mother’s insanity.24

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He later purchased the lease on the building in Harley Street and constructed a gallery so that he could exhibit his pictures. Later again he moved around the corner to Queen Anne Street. Thomas Sydney Cooper has written a grotesque description of Turner’s home: I called upon Turner at his house in Queen Anne Street, and a dirty-looking house it was! There was no evidence of its having been painted for a great many years. I knocked, and knocked again, when at last the door was opened by a most frightful-looking creature – a short woman, with a very large head, wearing a dirty white gown, and with a ragged dirty thing tied round her head and throat, making her already large head twice its natural size. She looked just like those ogres one sees at the pantomime before the transformation scene, and was altogether a most appalling vision … I shall never forget the damp, dirty smell of the inside of the house.25

Other accounts confirm Turner’s slovenliness. The lady who opened the door was probably Hannah Danby, Sarah’s niece, who worked for Turner as a housekeeper. Turner was understandably sensitive to suggestions that his work was that of a madman, but there was a monomania about his vast output.26 His efforts, largely successful, to keep his private life entirely secret, were certainly obsessional. In May 1804 he annoyed Farington by insensitive behaviour at the Royal Academy, of which he was such a new member.27 After the death of his father he neglected such mundane complications as the maintenance of his home, and even of his old paintings. His isolation was increased in old age by the complete decay of his teeth, which forced him to suck his food for nourishment.

 As a young artist in the 1790s, Turner worked in the tradition of the picturesque, exhibiting characteristics of the picturesque method even in the architectural drawings he executed when working in Thomas Malton’s studio.28 By the turn of the century, his work was showing the subjective values of the sublime. It was stimulated by his reading of poetry, especially of that by James Thomson, the voice of romantic nature, and also by patriotism. A verse or two of poetry, sometimes only halfremembered, or from his own draft poem “Fallacies of Hope,” was generally attached to his canvases. In his early work Turner was evidently motivated to play his part patriotically in realizing the potentialities of

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the British national character.29 Patriotism, however, came a long way second to humanity. Ruskin writes that “his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keen than even his sense for natural beauty – heart-sight deep as eye-sight.”30 Turner painted the poor with affection but Ruskin believed that Turner’s principal love was the wilderness. Stephen Rigaud, son of John Rigaud ra and an early associate of Turner’s, recalled a sketching trip in which the others of the party visited the parish church on Sunday. “A sweet secluded spot, whose solemn stillness seemed to invite the soul to meditation and to God! Alas! for Turner,” he wrote, “it had no such attraction. He worshipped nature with all her beauties; but forgot God his Creator and disregarded all the gracious invitation of the Gospel.”31 Turner’s version of the sublime obviously was not a conscious pursuit of the divine, but his paintings nonetheless are transcendently numinous. The modern scholar Jerrold Ziff writes: “The role Turner assigns to the landscape painter did not include seeking beauty in the ordinary and commonplace. Rather, it was to infuse the subject with a transcendent idea or truth.”32 Ruskin wrote savagely of Turner’s “devotion to its utmost strength in later years to meaningless classical compositions, such as the Fall and Rise of Carthage, Bay of Baiae, Daphne and Leucippus, and such others, which, with infinite accumulation of material, [were] yet utterly heartless and emotionless, dead to the very root of thought, and incapable of producing wholesome or useful effect on any human mind, except only as exhibitions of technical skill and graceful arrangement.”33 Perhaps Ruskin undervalued Turner’s moral purpose. Turner perceived the struggle between Rome and Carthage as an allegory of the struggle of British constitutional government against Bonapartism. However, modern viewers will agree with Ruskin that Turner’s genius is most remarkable for his perception of nature and his capacity to express it in paint. His most valuable expressions of the sublime come from his management of subjects from nature. Unusually, for a professional artist, Turner lacked the ability to paint portraits, but he had a rare courage when it came to looking at the natural world and learning to express its character and moods in paint. His childhood having been passed in the heart of London, close to the river and its forest of shipping, it was to be a matter of enormous importance when he set out for the first time in 1790 to explore the countryside. He usually travelled on foot, covering up to twenty-five miles a day, and made hundreds of pencil notes in his sketchbooks, for later working.

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His imagination kindled to the sight of rugged natural beauty. From then, as Ruskin says, it was a slow but sustained voyage of discovery, confined at first to his private sketches in watercolour, and only gradually, and somewhat to the dismay of his patrons, applied to the paintings he made for exhibition. It was in his representation of the elements that Turner most strongly expressed the emotions of the sublime, to a degree because of his unique capacity to express evanescent temporal qualities. Pearly sunrise, frosty mornings, flaring sunsets, the roaring firebox of an express train – all are fleeting transcendencies on the road to eternity, and Turner developed through a lifetime a unique capacity to make this evident in paint. His focus on elemental forces and the evanescent moment made Turner unique amongst British artists of marine subjects. In Germany, Caspar David Friedrich was moved by the same metaphorical vision of nature, and was also remarkable in his atmospheric marine pictures. Turner was especially interested in observing the appearance of water. He was a keen fisherman, which was the ideal recreation for a man who happily spent hours looking at the surface of a river. His experience of the sea was initially limited to the coast, and to study of the work of earlier painters. Ruskin complained that Turner “painted many pictures in the manner of Vandevelde (who was the accepted authority of this time in sea painting), and received much injury from him. To the close of his life, Turner always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequences of his early study of Vandevelde. He never seemed to perceive color so truly in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. But [Ruskin added] he soon discovered the poorness of Vandevelde’s forms of waves.” It was not until the short-lived Peace of Amiens in 1802 made travel to the continent a practical possibility that Turner took the sea trip to France, on his way to Switzerland and Italy. He had, however, painted his first seascape six years earlier. Fishermen at Sea is a scene by moonlight of fishing boats lying at anchor in the tide rip off the Needles Rocks to the west of the Isle of Wight.34 Turner made it his first Academy exhibition, in 1796, and painted it with careful finish. Nevertheless, the representation of the tormented sea is amazing, and only the hardiest of seamen could view it without emotions that would satisfy ideas of the sublime. The moonlight and the fishing boat’s lantern concentrate the subject. Turner’s canvasses in the following years included several oil paintings in the Dutch manner of small craft in steep seas, among which were Dutch Boats in a Gale of 1801, and the even more alarming Fishermen

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upon a Lee-Shore, in Squally Weather, 1802.35 Turner’s sketches for the Fishermen were made on paper prepared with a pink-brown wash that he scratched through to note highlights and foam.36 Dutch Boats had been commissioned by the Duke of Bridgewater as a companion to a painting by William Van de Velde the Younger, and was very well received by West, Fuseli, and Constable. Farington noted that West had spoken in the highest manner of a picture in the Exhibition painted by Turner, adding “it is what Rembrandt thought of but could not do.” West was also reported by Sir George Beaumont as saying that Turner’s picture made the Van de Velde “look like glass bottles.” Beaumont, however, would have none of that, replying that “Vandevelde’s picture made Turner’s Sea appear like pease soup.”37 Fuseli’s opinion was that “Turner’s Sea Piece Had more comprehension in it than that in the same room by Vandevelde, but was very inferior to it in execution.” From Turner’s first crossing of the English Channel in 1802 came a superb representation of a boisterous sea in Calais Pier, with French Poissards Preparing for Sea: an English Packet Arriving, now at the National Gallery.38 Calais Pier continued the theme of small craft in turbulent water. Small craft also dominated his The Shipwreck, Fishing Boats Endeavouring to Rescue the Crew of 1805, a subject in the tradition of Claude-Joseph Vernet but compositionally different.39 It is a terrifying picture that puts the viewer in the middle of a scene of disaster and imminent death by drowning. Both Fishermen upon a Lee-shore and Calais Pier exploited Turner’s trademark motifs of a vortex in the clouds and localized lighting which dominates the eye. To one who has brought a small boat in a gale into Calais, the hollowing of the sea as it swirls around the wharf looks entirely true to nature, but contemporary critics were surprised by what they saw, and not receptive. The art critic in the Sun considered Calais Pier to be “a lamentable proof of genius losing itself in affectation.” The complaint of the critic in the British Press that the clouds are “too material and opake” may be thought more substantial, but the critic had not been in Calais on the day. Beaumont disparaged Turner’s representation of the foam-streaked water as resembling “veins in a marble slab,” clearly disagreeing with the author of “Marine Scenery,” who had felt the likeness to be something missed by most artists.40 Beaumont was infatuated with the rich browns of old masters paintings that had been subjected to years of candle soot and revarnishing. Constable became his close friend and eventually brought

J.M.W. Turner, Dunbar Sketch Book, #54, p. 116v,

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him to recognize the value of letting daylight creep into his pictures, but he was never able to understand Turner.41 Other critics gradually came to see what Turner was up to. His Shipwreck of 1805 was well received. Despite the depiction of the sea in a much more confused state, it sold on the first day to Sir John Leicester for £300. It was the first of Turner’s oil paintings to be engraved for sale.42 Turner’s experience with the sea continued to expand. Continental travel was rendered impossible when the peace collapsed in 1803, fortunately after Turner’s return, but in July 1805 he rented accommodation in Isleworth close to the Thames, and acquired what Lord Egremont referred to as “a yacht.” It was likely an open sailing vessel, which he may have named Argo or Delight. His sketchbooks reveal his voyages in the Thames between Oxford and the mouth of the Medway, where spray spattered his pages.43 He probably went no further out to sea in his own boat, but he is believed to have travelled in colliers, and at least once he went to sea in a fishing boat. A newspaperman, Cyrus Redding, has left an account of an expedition Turner took with him to an island in Bigbury Bay during a sketching trip to Devon in 1813.

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Our excuse was to eat hot lobsters, fresh from the water to the kettle. The sea was boisterous – the morning unpropitious. Our boat was Dutch built, with outriggers and undecked. It belonged to a fine old weather-beaten seaman, a Captain Nicols. Turner, an artist, half Italian named Demaria, an officer of the army, Mr. Collier, a mutual friend, and myself, with a sailor, composed the party. The sea had that dirty puddled appearance which often precedes a hard gale. We kept towards Ram Head to obtain an offing, and when running out from the land the sea rose higher, until off Stokes Point, it became stormy. We mounted the ridges bravely. The sea, in that part of the Channel, rolls in grand furrows from the Atlantic, and we had run about a dozen miles. The artist enjoyed the scene. He sat in the stern sheets intently watching the sea, and not at all affected by the motion. Two of our number were ill. The soldier, in a delicate coat of scarlet, white, and gold, looked dismal enough, drenched with spray, and so ill, that, at last, he wanted to jump overboard. We were obliged to lay him on the rusty iron ballast in the bottom of the boat, and keep him down with a spar laid across him. Demaria was silent in his suffering. In this way we made Bur Island. The difficulty was how to get through the surf, which looked unbroken. At last, we got round under the lee of the island, and contrived to get on shore. All this time, Turner was silent, watching the tumultuous scene. The little island, and the solitary hut it held, the bay in the bight of which it lay, and the dark long Bolthead to seaward, against the rocky shore of which the waves broke with fury, made the artist become absorbed in contemplation, not uttering a syllable. While the shell-fish were preparing, Turner, with a pencil, clambered nearly to the summit of the island, and seemed writing rather than drawing. How he succeeded, owing to the violence of the wind, I do not know. He, probably, observed something in the sea aspect which he had not before noted. We took our pic-nic dinner and lobsters, and soon became merry over our wine on that wild islet.44

Not all of Turner’s marine pictures are equally good in their representation of the sea. The water in several of his Venitian oil paintings, such as his Venice at the Victoria and Albert, look like slick pavements. Ruskin had noted this lack of opacity. The same complaint cannot be made of Turner’s watercolour Venice, San Giorgio from the Dogana: Sunrise, and perhaps he had difficulty transferring to oils thoughts that he had developed in watercolour. In his magnificent oil painting Life Boat and Manby Apparatus of 1831, also at the Victoria and Albert, the weakness of the “last crash” of the sea on the beach may well be the reason for Ruskin’s assertion that “Nobody can do anything with it.”45

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This is only to say that Turner was always willing to risk difficult pictures of the sea. His Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames of 1806 is undeniably a highly painterly precursor of impressionism.46 Turner continued to develop his representation of the sea during a long life. In 1835 he painted a sea piece with no subject but the sea itself. Waves breaking Against the Wind was as great a development on Calais Pier as that great painting had been on the work of Turner’s contemporaries.47 A particularly terrible experience at sea in 1842 was to lead to one of his more famous canvasses, with the highly descriptive title of: Snow Storm – Steamboat off a Harbour’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water and Going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night the Ariel left Harwich.48 A Reverend Mr Kingsley told Ruskin that Turner had told him: “I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like. I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it. I was lashed for four hours, and I did not expect to escape; but I felt bound to record it if I did. But no one had any business to like the picture.” When Kingsley said that his mother, who had had a similar experience at sea, said it “brought it all back to her,” Turner asked if she was herself a painter. On finding she was not, he commented: “Then she ought to have been thinking of something else.” Critics called the picture a mass of “soapsuds and whitewash.” Indignantly Turner grumbled: “What would they have? I wonder what they think the sea’s like? I wish they’d been in it.”49 Ruskin considered Turner’s Snow Storm to be one of his greatest, and most truthful, paintings. Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days and nights, and to those who have not, I believe it must be unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water from its prolonged agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and where one curls over to break form a festoon like a drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the water is under a great cataract; and

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their masses, being thus half water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual water. Add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it … and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling mist; imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as I have often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave; and finally, conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no farther in any direction than you could see through a cataract. Suppose the effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show this annihilation to itself, and you have the sea picture of the Academy, 1842 – the Snowstorm, one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by Turner.50

The elements of water and air, at dawn with the sun rising through vapour, and in storm with the sea beaten into spray, cannot be separated. For a lifetime, Turner strove to represent their dynamic, and the effect on them of light. His recognition of the essential quality of colour – its identity with light – and his efforts to express light in paint are perhaps his most important characteristics as a painter. The source of the light could be fire, as in his canvasses of Keelmen heaving in Coals by Night of 1835 and Rain, Steam and Speed, The Great Western Railway of 1844, but if so it was as a counterpoint to the light of the sun and moon, and was essentially connected with representation of the qualities of the air.51 More than the William Van de Veldes, Turner’s model was the seventeenth-century painter Claude Gellée, Claude of Lorraine, who, as Ruskin put it, set the sun in heaven. But Turner was to leave his master far behind, and learned to express all the effects of light on nature. Habitually, Turner arose before dawn to watch the sun rising through the misty air. As he aged his fascination with the effect of mist, spray, and snow on the light led him to give the atmosphere increasing importance, until it came to dominate. To express light, white came increasingly to command Turner’s palette.52 The fourth element, earth, was less obviously a matter of deep interest to Turner, but his mastery of the problems of painting trees indi-

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cates that he was not indifferent to the earthy element. His interest in rocks is indicated by his subscription to a geological journal. His landscapes of the turn of the century are firmly rooted in the soil, or more particularly, on massive rocks, but he felt at liberty to make quite major alterations in details if it served his larger end. As he matured and developed his power as the pioneer impressionist that he was, the elemental earth was to become increasingly overwhelmed by water, air, and fire. Turner’s earliest works were drawings, mezzotint engravings, and watercolours, the last of which are regarded by some critics as being his best, most personal, works. His watercolours were well received by contemporaries, but this was doubtless because he did not exhibit anything that would have been viewed as experimental. In 1909, when W.G. Rawlinson wrote an introduction to The Studio’s publication of The Watercolours of J.M.W. Turner, only his most conservative work was taken seriously, and the 2001 exhibition of Turner watercolours at the Royal Academy also excluded his abstract work.53 Most of his 19,000 surviving watercolours were never intended for exhibition, but these experimental pieces were the cutting edge of Turner’s genius. Turner was to participate, and be a leader, in the development of new techniques in watercolour such as the washing out of ground to reveal the white of the paper behind. Farington’s note in his diary on 28 March 1804 that a picture by William Daniell had been “executed in Turner’s manner,” showed that Turner’s methods were becoming influential. The lights are made out by drawing a pencil [i.e., brush] with water in it over the parts intended to be light (a general ground of dark colour having been laid where required) and raising the colour so damped by the pencil by means of blotting paper; after which with crumbs of bread the parts are cleared. Such colour as may afterwards be necessary may be passed over the different parts. A white chalk pencil (Gibraltar rock pencil) to sketch the forms that are to be light. – A rich, draggy appearance may be obtained by passing a camel Hair pencil nearly dry over them, which only flirts the damp on the part so touched & by blotting paper the lights are shewn partially.54

Eventually Turner applied his new concepts to the oil paintings he exhibited at the Royal Academy, and reaped a whirlwind of critical abuse. Farington was one of those who were left behind by Turner, and became one of his detractors, but he recorded Robert Smirke’s more positive view, which he expressed when he called on 12 of June 1815. Smirke said he agreed with the pseudonymous author of a Catalogue

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Raisonné of the shows at the British Institution that the “virulence of Criticism on the pictures painted by Turner, [was] such as should be reserved for Crime, but [was] wholly disproportioned to a subject of painting however much disapproved. – He defended Turner’s works and said they ought not to be judged by comparing them with the works of Claude or others; that they were in a style quite His own & consistent.”55 As Smirke was himself the author of the Catalogue Raisonné his agreement is perhaps not surprising, but is valuable nonetheless. Haydon was one of Turner’s critics. He wrote in his diary in June 1829 his conviction that Turner’s early work in watercolour was a misfortune which “sticks to him & will stick to him through Life. No Water Colour Painter can manage oil Colours – or ever gets rid of the washy meagreness of their early habits.” Viciously, he added: “The Landscape Painters stand up for Turner with an heroic adhesion, conscious if they don’t what becomes of them.”56

 Turner’s first naval painting was the Battle of the Nile, at 10 o’Clock, when the L’Orient blew up, from the Station of the Gun Boats between the Battery and Castle of Aboukir. In 1798 the Royal Academy had changed its rules to permit artists to attach lines of poetry to their canvasses, and Turner chose a verse from Milton’s Paradise Lost, book vi: … immediate in a flame, But soon obscur’d with smoke, all heav’n whose roar Imbowel’d with outrageous noise the air, And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul Their devilish glut, chain’d thunderbolts and hail Of iron globes.

The Nile canvas has not survived, but the painterly possibilities presented by the explosion of the French flagship l’Orient, and the lights it would have thrown on the surrounding ships, must have appealed to Turner. The possibility cannot be entirely dismissed that his easel painting caught the eye of Robert Barker and led to a commission to paint the Nile panorama.57 In the next six years Turner’s importance as an artist increased rapidly, but apart from an historical painting of Boats carrying out Anchors

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and Cables to Dutch Men of War, in 1665, he did not return to naval subjects until he heard the news of the battle at Trafalgar, and Nelson’s death.58 When hms Victory bearing Nelson’s body arrived at the Nore anchorage, Turner travelled down to Sheerness to sketch her as she entered the Medway. He made a diagram of Victory’s deck, another of the position of the ships in the battle, a sketch of the break of the quarterdeck, and another of the hull taken from a boat, and he did a study for a “Death of Lord Nelson,” with detailed notes written into his sketchbook. “Mr. Atkinson, square, large, light air, grey eye 5-11.” “Mr. Hardy wore B. gaiters, 4 sailors carried some officers down about the time L.N. fell, on his left arm. Some one forwarded to help him. A marine to every gun stands aft 8 others. C. Hardy rather tall, looks dreadful … fair, about 36 years. Marshall, young, long tail, round face, proud lips. 5.2.” Of the marines, he noted: “Undress a red jacket; sometimes a red fancy shirt.”59 Turner painted two large paintings during the winter, but when he exhibited Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory at his own gallery in Harley Street, none of that detail was portrayed.60 This picture was severely criticized. Sir George Beaumont had complained to Farington after seeing Calais Pier: “Turner finishes his distances & middle distances upon a scale that requires universal precision throughout his pictures, – but his foregrounds are comparative blots, and faces and figures with[ou]t a feature being expressed.”61 A similar observation was made by Farington of the Trafalgar. On 3 June 1806 he recorded in his diary: “Turner’s I went to & saw His Picture of the Battle of Trafalgar. It appeared to me a very crude, unfinished performance, the figures miserably bad. – His pictures in general merited similar remarks, when the prices he puts upon them are considered, because much more ought to be shown to justify such demand.”62 When after further work Turner showed his Trafalgar at the British Institution in February 1808, Benjamin West echoed Farington. West found Turner’s figures “miserably bad,” and Robert Hunt in The Examiner remarked that “Turner’s Death of Nelson is a spirited piece of shipping and effect; but we do not recollect that all the men were murdered on board Nelson’s ship.”63 But not all the critics were hostile. In June 1808, its first and only year of publication, the Review of Publications of Art recognized Turner’s Trafalgar as an important development in the artistic representation of battle: “It might not perhaps be improper, as this picture is new in its

Top: J.M.W. Turner, drawing of the quarterdeck of H.M.S. Victory, © Tate, London, 2004, do8275 Box 283. Above: J.M.W. Turner, H.M.S. Victory,

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Tate, London, 2004, tb89 18v.

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kind, to call it a British epic picture. It was the practice of Homer and the great epic poets, in their pictures, to detail the exploits or sufferings of their heroes, and to generalise or suggest the rest of the battle, or other accompaniment, and Mr. Turner, in the picture before us, has detailed the death of his hero, while he has suggested the whole of a great naval victory, which we believe has never before been successfully accomplished, if it has been attempted, in a single picture.”64 The critic was probably John Landseer, who had engraved several works by de Loutherbourg and Smirke, as well as those by Turner himself. He was at the top of his profession, but was a man with a grievance. In 1806 he had been expelled from the Royal Academy for writing disparaging remarks about Alderman Boydell, who had died two years before, having lost his fortune through heavy investment in his Shakespeare Gallery and the collapse of the export market due to the war.65 Boydell had had to petition parliament for permission to dispose of his property by lottery. The following year Landseer failed in an attempt to get engravers better recognition in the Academy.66 It is evident that his tact was minimal, but his insight into Turner’s Trafalgar was right on the mark. “The painter has supposed himself looking forward from the mizen starboard shrouds, along the main-deck of Nelson’s ship, which is closely engaged with the Redoubtable, and while he has brought together all those leading facts which mark the battle of Trafalgar, and the death of our noble and gallant Admiral, he has either painted or suggested all those circumstances of a great and dreadful sea-fight, which shall rouse the hearts of his countrymen to deeds of naval heroism, or melt them with pity.” Turner had provided a key of the main figures in the action, and an account of the battle, but despite this gesture in the direction of the tradition of history painting, it is unlikely that in this picture he was especially concerned about the details of action.67 He was moving in quite a different direction from West – and Copley. His masterpiece combines the heroic with the terrible in a way more familiar to twentieth-century viewers than to those of his own time. Turner clearly sympathized with the democratic perception of Joseph Wright of Derby. The golden lights on the billowing canvas and gun-smoke in his Trafalgar suggest transcendency, but they also dwarf the figures of sailors and marines into pitiful impotency. Nelson, who is only just recognizable in the smoke, is but one of many existentialist heroes showing courage in the face of forces beyond their control. It may not have been so far from Turner’s

J.M.W. Turner, Battle of Trafalgar, as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory, Oil on canvas, 1708 ⫻ 2388mm, © Tate, London, 2004, n00480.

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J.M.W. Turner, H.M.S. Victory Carrying Nelson’s Body Proceeding up the Channel, drawing, © Tate, London, 2004, cxviii.

intention that his figures should appeared to have been “murdered.” Perhaps Turner’s very humble origins gave him an insight into the heroism of ordinary humanity which may have been lost on the rich and powerful who usually purchased battle pictures. The Trafalgar might be considered as the first British painting that could have taken a place among the works of the twentieth-century war artists. It was first exhibited two years before Francisco Goya finished his great Dos de Mayo, depicting the sufferings of ordinary people before the might of the state. Goya, a portrait painter, gave his subjects individuality. Turner’s approach was consistent with his difficulty with portraiture, but it can be argued that the loss of individuality is indeed one of the curses of war. Goya was also to generalize his figures in his series of

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etchings of The Disasters of War, which he began in 1809 and worked on until 1820, but which were not published until 1863.68 Turner was to return to the focus on the victims of war in his Field of Waterloo of 1818.69 A story by Turner’s first biographer, Walter Thornbury, is that Turner was suspected by Mrs de Loutherbourg of stealing her husband’s secrets. In the winter of 1806– 07 Turner had moved from Isleworth to a rented house in Hammersmith, at an address in the Upper Mall near the home of the de Loutherbourgs in Hammersmith Terrace. This allowed Turner to call, but apparently Mrs de Loutherbourg didn’t like him. Farington noted in November 1810 that de Loutherbourg had described himself as “of a serious turn of mind, and to dislike mixing much with company,” but that was when his health was failing. After his death Farington reported a neighbour of de Loutherbourg’s saying that he was “beloved by everyone, ‘He was,’ said he, ‘never so happy as when He was doing good.’” And Mrs de Loutherbourg, he said, was “a most captivating woman: ‘A dozen such,’ said He, ‘you shall not see in a long life.’”70 If fault there was, it was probably on Turner’s part. He did compete with other artists and cannot have failed to learn something from de Loutherbourg’s use of light. But his close-up view of a naval battle was unlike anything attempted by de Loutherbourg, or probably by anyone before him.71 The chilly reception given Turner’s 1806–08 Trafalgar was in stark contrast to that experienced by West with his Death of Lord Nelson, but in 1806 existentialist heroes were ahead of their time. In 1810 Turner’s Trafalgar was still in his gallery, with a price of £400. Ruskin says that Trafalgar was still unsold at the time of Turner’s death.72 But Turner was reluctant to sell pictures, which he called his “children.” He may have retained his Trafalgar for that reason. His sales in 1808 were by no means unsubstantial. Four of his paintings were purchased by Lord Egremont and three were sold to other buyers, for a total of £1,417/1/–. As the purchases were made in his own gallery, there was no dealer’s commission to pay. Turner also realized an ambition in 1808 when he was elected the Academy’s Professor of Perspective. Heath muttered to Farington that he did not suppose Turner “sufficiently informed of the Science of Perspective to qualify Him to give Lectures in it,” and indeed he was so inarticulate that it is virtually impossible to follow his published words.73 It was also to be several years before he got his act together so far as to be able to meet his first class.

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The 1806–08 Trafalgar was not Turner’s only recognition of the subject. Among the sketches he had made at Sheerness was a composite finished watercolour of H.M.S.Victory under topsails on three different headings, one of which is ominously headed directly toward a small craft and the viewer. This is a lively and realistic picture, but by the time it was reworked into an oil painting as The Victory Returning from Trafalgar, 1806, it had become much more formal.74 Victory had lost her tumblehome, becoming wall-sided and rising disproportionately out of the water to enhance a majestic image. This same exaggeration of the hull was to appear in others of his subsequent naval canvases. Turner had also added a background of the Isle of Wight showing the Needles Rocks. Never at a loss for irritating sailors, Turner forgot to show Victory’s flag at half-mast. The Victory Returning from Trafalgar was one of the first oil paintings Turner was to sell to Walter Fawkes, who was already his patron and friend. The two were drawn together by their political values as well as by art.75 Fawkes was a Foxite Whig and was active in the anti-slavery movement. In May 1812 he was to cause quite a stir by a speech against the war at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in which he urged the restoration of the constitution to give the common people a political voice. By this time Turner was also enjoying the patronage of the earls of Egremont, Essex, Lonsdale, and Yarborough, Sir John Leicester, and Sir John Soane the antiquary, who had also undertaken the architectural design for the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

 Apart from the paintings of the Victory, Turner worked up in his studio at this time a number of marine pictures from sketches he had made onboard his “yacht” afloat near Sheerness. Apparently he also worked with models. Several of these pictures had naval ships as part of their subjects. In 1807 he exhibited there in his own gallery: Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey, with the Junction of the Thames and the Medway from the Nore, The Mouth of the Thames, and Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen cleaning and selling Fish.76 The next year he exhibited The Confluence of the Thames and the Medway, with several moored ships, one of which has a sheer hulk alongside, and Sheerness as seen from the Nore, with the moored three-decker Nore guardship heading into a very dirty east wind, and the sun just rising through the horizon

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haze.77 The Nore guardship also forms part of the background for Shoeburyness, Fishermen Hailing a Whitstable Hoy, now part of the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. He exhibited Shoeburyness in 1809 and Fawkes purchased it the following year to hang it over his library fireplace.78 West was not impressed. He had become disenchanted with Turner’s work. In May 1805 he had told Farington his opinion that Turner’s pictures were “tending to imbecility. That his water was like stone.” A year later, that “Turner had become intoxicated, and produced extravagancies.” Now he said that “he had been to Turner’s gallery & was disgusted with what He found there; views of the Thames, crude blotches, nothing could be more vicious.”79 Despite his age, West was painting some of his best pictures, but they did not depart from eighteenth-century technical values. Turner was becoming impressionistic, and was setting new standards. His Thames pictures are of quite a different character to his Trafalgar, because he was not distracted from his painting of the sea and ships by a need to express the poignancy of war. The critic in the Review of Publications of Art, believed to be John Landseer, wrote of the Confluence: “The ships in ordinary, or which are taking on board their heavy stores and rigging, display considerable technical knowledge of marine affairs, and are painted with great care, as are also the machinery for swinging in the masts and guns, and the small vessel, laden (we suppose) with hay. This knowledge is always traceable in Mr. Turner’s pictures, and we wish we could more frequently say the same of his care.”80 David Hill’s recent description of Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey can hardly be improved upon: In the painting the sun is low to the right and just catches the top of the waves. Since we are looking south the sun must be in the west and therefore setting. Some fishermen in a small boat seem to have been out for a good while, perhaps most of the day, for they have a number of fish on board. A strong wind is blowing from right to left, about 600 off our starboard bow, and the sky is overarched by storm clouds. It is high time that they made their way back to the distant shore, but their rudder is giving trouble, and one leans perilously over the stern, attending to something below the waterline. Another holds onto his legs. To the left two cutters are sailing across the wind at maximum speed. The fishing-boat is directly in its [i.e., their] path. Another crew member shouts something to the two attending to the rudder, and from his expression we can

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suppose that his message has some urgency. The fourth sits up at the bow, watching two cutters passing on a port tack. These are making progress only with difficulty. They have foresails and jibsails up, and tack close into the wind. The big spritsails help, but we can see that the nearer of the two is busy trying to sheet in the mainsail, that is, to pull the boom around to the middle of the boat to try and catch some wind, and we can see that its sail is loose, compared to the more distant boat. This is mostly a product of the further boat having got [to] windward and robbed the nearer of its wind. This is a bit unkind, particularly as the going would have been hard enough as it was. Meanwhile, the danger to the foreground boat is acute. The cutter is bearing down at top speed, with its sail spread full to the wind. The captain would be reluctant to turn to port (that is to our right) because that would be to lose his speed and in any case he would risk a collision with the virtually stationary vessels there. He must be tempted to bear away to starboard, that is to our left, for that will maintain his speed or perhaps even increase it, but as we can see, and he cannot, there is a buoy in his way. Hitting that could prove catastrophic. The only solution would be to turn hard into the wind, tuck in behind the cutters to the right and, with the sail full (there is after all, no time to get it down), the boat will come to a more or less dead halt. He needs to take this course immediately, but we cannot have any great confidence that he will.81

Landseer was also impressed by Turner’s atmospherics in this suite of paintings. The shorelines in the lower Thames pictures, he wrote, appear as … little more than mere threads of distance: yet in Mr. Turner’s pictures of these subjects, they answer important purposes. They serve, by identifying the several spots represented, to give names to the pictures, and connect them with a series; their horizontal lines impart a certain degree of steadiness which the painter values in his composition; they contrast the upright lines of his masts and rigging, and the undulating forms of his wide-weltering waves, and they serve as a foundation for the rolling clouds of his gathering tempests, or the raving zigzaggery of those which the tempest has broken over the landscape. In calms, horizontal lines are lines at once of calmness and of the most simple grandeur; and in storms, it is probably a source of secret pleasure that we trace a line of firm inflexibility, where all else is yielding to the fury of the elements.

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In treating such objects as agitated seas, the motion and conduct of Mr. Turner’s pencil, eludes observation: your eye cannot travel along the scooped edges of his waves, as it can in the works of other marine painters … A tempestuous sea with all its characteristic features and ever-varying forms, of foam, spray, and pellucid wave, is presented to your eye, but no man shall positively say this is the work of a pencil, or any other known instrument. You see only the presiding mind. The hand is concealed.

Landseer was less impressed with the Sheerness and the Isle of Sheppey, which he thought seemed “almost everywhere to want finishing.” He thought the Confluence was “altogether much more carefully painted.”82 He dismissed any argument that the Sheerness was less concrete because it represented early dawn, but in fact it does, and Turner seems more reliable in this matter than Landseer. Robert Hunt, perhaps partly because he liked to be out of step with Landseer, wrote, “We think [Turner’s] Purfleet and View at Sheerness the finest sea-pieces ever painted by a British artist.”83

 Turner undertook a specifically naval subject when, on the first of November 1807, a detachment of the force that had transported the army to Copenhagen in order to secure the Danish fleet, together with two of the surrendered Danish ships, arrived in Spithead. He had been waiting there for them since 10 October. He sketched the scene from a boat, and in 1808 he exhibited in his own gallery a picture of Two of the Danish Ships which were seized at Copenhagen entering Portsmouth Harbour. This work has characteristics that would have satisfied the ideal of the picturesque, the eye being led resolutely by a cloud vortex and light path across the water from the foreground through the middle distance to a distant and indistinct horizon. The ships are carefully drawn, and the wet work by the ratings in a steep sea certainly arouses enough alarm to pay nodding tribute to the sublime. The picture is only slightly marred by the fact that a cutter in the foreground appears to be making a course too close to the wind. It is a surprising oversight, considering Turner’s growing experience with his small yacht in the Thames, but perhaps it was consistent with his practice of putting a dramatic sub-plot in the foreground.

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The critic of the Review, John Landseer, was impressed when he saw the picture in Turner’s gallery: “Whether his ships ride in calm and stately dignity, or are tossed high on the stormy wave, they are always so well placed in the water, and so technically true, that the mariner is satisfied, and so picturesque that the painter is satisfied also. The packet with soldiers on board, and the two boats toward the left hand corner of the picture, one of which is heaving or letting go an anchor, contribute much, by contrasting the grandeur of the lofty Danes, to the picturesque grace of the composition. The white sails of the latter relieve with excellent effect from a broad and darkish cloud.”84 He added that the Danish ships were especially lofty because they were riding higher in the water than the English, no doubt due to the absence of heavy stores in the hold. When Turner exhibited his canvas at the Royal Academy in 1809, he stripped the topicality from the title. The public’s discomfort with the assault on the neutral Danes made it a sensible marketing decision to rename the picture, simply: Spithead: Boat’s Crew Recovering an Anchor. Hunt wrote enthusiastically: This piece represents several men of war magnificently riding on the waves. From the grandeur with which this animated artist has invested them, the spectator instantly and exultingly recognizes the sublime bulwarks of Britain “towering in their strength.” The large and forcible masses of light and shade, and the pervading leaden hue of the piece, heighten its solemnity. This grey is, however, in a degree enlivened by some warm hues. The steadiness of the large and ponderous vessels is judiciously contrasted with the light buoyancy of the boats. From his perfect knowledge of perspective, his unrivalled management of the clare obscure and colour, the fluctuation and transparency of his water, I do not hesitate to say that Mr. Turner surpasses the Backhausens and Vanderveldes of former days, and is without a rival in the present.85

Hunt’s opinion, however, was not shared by the old guard, who had difficulty with the direction Turner was taking. Thomas Hearne expressed himself very forcibly to Farington in July 1809 in criticism of Turner’s paintings, which he characterized as having “neither sublimity or dignity.” Of one of his pictures Hearne complained that “the sky was painted by a Mad Man. Talk of Wilson retiring before Him – true Wilson on seeing such a picture would soon have retired.” He felt Turner’s sea piece was “raw.”86 Hearne was sixty-five years old, which may explain his difficulty with any tendency toward impressionism.87

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J.M.W. Turner, Spithead: Boat’s Crew Recovering an Anchor, oil on canvas, support: 1714 ⫻ 2337mm, © Tate, London, 2004, n00481.

 Public interest in naval subjects continued after the conclusion of peace in 1814 and the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, but Turner was not greatly interested in painting such canvasses. He travelled down to Spithead at the time of the fleet review in June 1814 and the visit of the allied monarchs, but he did not paint a picture of the scene; it depressed him.88 In 1818 he did spend a day making the lovely pencil and watercolour sketch of A First Rate Taking in Stores, but only as a favour for a friend.89 Edith Mary Fawkes, a great-niece of Turner’s friend and patron, recorded that during one of Turner’s visits to the Fawkes’s family home he was asked by his host to make a drawing “that [would] give some idea of the size of a man of war.” Possibly he wanted Turner to do the drawing for the benefit of Fawkes’s eldest son, Hawksworth.

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“The idea hit Turner’s fancy, for with a chuckle he said aside to Walter Fawkes’s eldest son, then a boy of about 15, ‘Come along Hawkey and we will see what we can do for Papa,’ and the boy sat by his side the whole morning and witnessed the evolution of The First Rate Taking in Stores. His description of the way Turner went to work was very extraordinary; he began by pouring wet paint onto the paper till it was saturated, he tore, he scratched, he scrubbed at it in a kind of frenzy and the whole thing was chaos – but gradually and as if by magic the lovely ship, with all its exquisite minutiae came into being and by luncheon time the drawing was taken down in triumph.”90 This description of Turner’s method Edith Mary found inconsistent with the picture, which to her showed no evidence “of the wet stage[;] every touch appears to have been put in with a firm but delicate hand.” But she wrote that she had “heard [her] uncle give these particulars dozens of times, so that it [was] almost difficult to disbelieve the account.” Turner’s habit of scratching out to produce brightness is notorious. Ruskin wrote that the engravers, “as far as they were able, would tempt Turner farther into the practice, which was precisely equivalent to that of supplying the place of healthy and heart-whole cheerfulness by dram-drinking.”91 Apart from the sketch for Fawkes, Turner was not to undertake another explicitly naval painting until 1823 when, for the only time in his life, he was given a royal commission. William James, in the second edition of his Naval History of Great Britain, which was published in 1826, wrote that after years of neglect, de Loutherbourg’s Battle of the Glorious First of June had been restored to favour to furnish the newly redecorated St. James’s Palace. “A picture was required, representing the Victory engaged in the battle of Trafalgar” to be a companion piece. At the suggestion of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who had succeeded as president of the Royal Academy following West’s death in 1820, Turner was commissioned by George IV. Turner’s second treatment of the Battle of Trafalgar was compositionally an entirely new painting, but it found no more favour with the sailors, who wanted all the strings to be in the right place.92 The first marine painter of the day undertook the task [wrote James]; and, in due time, the large area of canvass, which … became necessary for this, was covered with all the varied tints which Mr. Turner knows so well how to mingle and combine, to give effect to his pictures and excite the admiration of the beholder.

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Unfortunately for the subject which this splendid picture is meant to represent, scarcely a line of truth, beyond perhaps the broadside view of the Victory’s hull, is to be seen upon it. To say what time of the day, or what particular incident in the Victory’s proceedings, is meant to be referred to, we do not pretend; for the telegraphic message is going up, which was hoisted at about 11h 40m A.M., the mizen topmast is falling, which went about 1 P.M., a strong light is reflected upon the Victory’s bow and sides from the burning Achille, which ship did not catch fire until 4h 40m, nor explode until 5h 45m P.M., the fore topmast, or rather, if our memory is correct, the foremast, of the British three-decker is falling, which never fell at all, and the Redoutable is sinking under the bows of the Victory, although the French ship did not sink until the night of the 22d, and then under the stern of the Swiftsure. We are sorry to be obliged to add that, with all these glaring falsehoods and palpable inconsistencies upon it, the picture stands, or until very lately did stand, in that room of the king’s palace, for which it was originally designed. The principal reason urged for giving to this very costly and highly honoured performance so preposterous an appearance, is that an adherence to truth would have destroyed the pictorial effect. Here is a ship, shattered in her hull, and stripped of the best part of her sails, pushing into a cluster of enemy’s ships without a grazed plank or a torn piece of canvass, to fire her first gun. Here is symbolized the first of naval heroes, with chivalric valour, devoting himself to his country’s cause; and yet, says an artist of high repute, “there is a lack of pictorial materials.” We hope some public-spirited individual, if not the state itself, will show whether this is really the case; for it is almost a national disgrace that there should yet be wanted a picture which, in accuracy of representation, no less than in strength and brilliancy of execution, is calculated to illustrate, and to stand as a lasting memorial of, one of the greatest sea-battles that ever has been, or that perhaps ever will be fought: a battle to the success of which England at this time owes, if not her political existence, her prosperity, happiness, and exalted station.93

James ended by giving a “hint” as to how a painter “who may consider it worth his while, or within his powers” should go about the business. In light of the accuracy of naval detail that Turner had displayed in his Spithead, his Thames suite, and his sketch for Fawkes, the liberty he took with his second Trafalgar is a matter of some interest. Cyrus Redding recorded a conversation following a ramble to the Tamar a few days after the 1813 Bigbury Bay excursion. Turner and James De Maria, who was a scene painter and another who tried his hand at panoramas,

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were observing a 74-gun ship of the line, and discussing the problems of painting her. De Maria thought it was important to show the gun ports. He admitted that they could not in fact be seen, but “the ports are still there.” Turner, however, insisted: “We can take only what we can see, no matter what is there. There are people in the ship – we don’t see them through the planks.”94 Ruskin later wrote that “Turner never drew anything that could be seen, without having seen it.” Turner took some trouble to add to his technical resources before starting to paint his Trafalgar commission. During his 1822 visit to Edinburgh he had met Schetky on the latter’s arrival in the royal squadron. On an earlier visit in 1818 Schetky and his sister Janet had invited Turner to breakfast, and had been “provoked by the coldness of his manner” when he was asked to look through their sketch books. “We intended to have a joyous evening on his account, but finding him such a stick we did not think the pleasure of showing him to our friends would be adequate to the trouble and expense.” On the 1822 visit, however, the relationship seems to have improved, to such an extent that when Turner was commissioned the following year to paint Trafalgar he asked Schetky if he could borrow detailed sketches of shipping. He also asked him if he could prepare a sketch of the Victory. “If you will make me a sketch of the Victory (she is in Hayle Lake or Portsmouth Harbour) three-quarter bow on starboard side, or opposite the bow port, you will much oblige.”95 Turner’s own sketch from 1805 had been made from the starboard quarter.96 But Turner had something else in mind than simple graphic representation. Ruskin believed that sometime before 1818 Turner had seen a ship wrecked against cliffs standing in deep water, and that “He never afterwards painted a ship quite in fair order. There is invariably a feeling about his vessels of strange awe and danger; the sails are in some way loosening, or flapping as if in fear; the swing of the hull, majestic as it may be, seems more at the mercy of the sea than in triumph over it; the ship never looks gay, never proud, only warlike and enduring.”97 After Turner’s death, Ruskin published a last volume of prints from Turner pictures, engraved by Thomas Lupton, including one made after the Sheerness painting. In his descriptive text he wrote: “I look upon this as one of the noblest sea-pieces which Turner ever produced. It has not his usual fault of over-crowding or over-glitter; the objects in it are few and noble, and the space infinite. The sky is quite one of his best: not violently black, but full of gloom and power; the complicated roundings

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of its volumes behind the sloop’s mast, and downwards to the left, have been rendered by the engraver with notable success; and the dim light entering along the horizon, full of rain, behind the ship of war, is true and grand in the highest degree.” But he also noted: “The ship of war in the distance is one of many instances of Turner’s dislike to draw complete rigging; and this not only because he chose to give an idea of his ships having seen rough service, and being crippled; but also because in men-of-war he liked the mass of the hull to be increased in apparent weight and size by want of upper spars. All artists of any rank share this last feeling … The fact is, partly that the precision of line in the complete spars of a man-of-war is too formal to come well into pictorial arrangements, and partly that the chief glory of a ship of the line is in its aspect of being ‘one that hath had losses.’”98 The importance of the Trafalgar commission to Turner meant that he had to subordinate technical naval detail to artistic and emotional values. When Schetky sent the sketch, not a very good one it must be said, he apologized for the proportions of the ship being distorted due to the Victory swinging at her mooring while he was working.99 But the same comment can be made about Turner’s own sketch, and the distortion does not appear to have worried him. At any rate he was not very effective in compensating for it. The fact that his picture was to hang next to de Loutherburg’s Glorious First of June was a challenge to Turner, but the criticism of de Loutherbourg’s composition for its sacrifice of tactical realism to subjective drama would not have encouraged Turner to attempt to match his careful and accurate sketch work. The challenge from the other painting was to match, or exceed, its drama and use of light. In an echo of the de Loutherbourg painting, Turner filled his foreground with sailors in the water, and clinging to wreckage. He came much closer to portraiture of these men than was his usual practice, but all the same they are very sketchy figures. By 1823 there was no probability that Turner would try and turn back the clock on his own artistic development. James Skene, another artist Turner probably met in Edinburgh, that year wrote an article on painting for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia in which he remarked that Turner was struggling with the problem of applying optical theory to artistic practice. “His scrutinizing genius seems to tremble on the verge of some new discovery in colour which may prove of the first importance to his art … Turner has struck out a new route, by the singular mixture of

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prismatic colours, with which he represents sky and water; the idea is singularly acute and philosophical.”100 Farington would hardly have sympathized, but he had died in December 1821 from falling down the stairs in the Didsbury parish church.101 The sailors were more interested in realism. There is a story purporting to originate with the battle painter George Jones, that Turner was “criticised and instructed daily by the naval men about the Court, and during eleven days he altered the rigging to suit the fancy of each seaman, and did it all with the greatest good-humour.” Jones had followed a more conventional heroic mould in his own paintings of Vittoria and Waterloo for the palace. Unfortunately there is no mention of this anecdote in Jones’s own memoirs.102 Another account, by Henry Tijou to Sir John Leicester, suggests that Turner had rather a harder time of it: There is rather an odd story connected with it [Turner’s Trafalgar] which was told me by a naval officer in attendance on the Duke of Clarence [later King William IV] by whom it was told him. When the picture was first placed in its situation[, and] Turner was painting on it[,] the Duke came into the apartments to see it[.] He immediately began as a sailor to make his observations[,] which not being agreeable, he says that Turner was rather rough in his reply. They went on for some time and the Duke finished the conversation by saying “I have been at sea the greater part of my life, Sir, you don’t know who you are talking to, and I’ll be damned if you know what you are talking about.”103

A third version was told by Alexander Munro, who wrote: “Turner always said the admiralty made him spoil this picture and the only sensible observations were from the Duke of Clarence.”104 One of the critics of Turner’s picture thought that his sketches, which had been done when the Victory had landed her guns and stores, led him to portray her too high out of the water. Perhaps, but Turner’s sketch is in fact accurate in that respect. Turner increased the vertical dimension of his warships in the final painting quite deliberately. He sometimes did the same with topographical subjects, to enhance their presence. His picture of St. Michael’s Mount is a prime example.105 Nevertheless, Sir Thomas Hardy maintained that Turner’s Trafalgar was like “a street scene, as the ships had more the effect of houses than men of war.”

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Ruskin valiantly defended Turner’s work, writing in a rather confusing passage that he had painted Trafalgar, “once, with all our might, for its death; twice, with all our might, for its victory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the Old Téméraire, and with it, to that order of things.”106 Perhaps the later Trafalgar appeals less to modern viewers because of its frank triumphalism. It was thought that the general disapproval of the Trafalgar lay behind the failure of the court to recognize Turner with a knighthood. Turner’s abandonment of the project to paint a series of pictures of the royal visit to Scotland may have been a reaction to the disappointment. Eventually the Trafalgar painting, along with de Loutherbourg’s and twenty-seven other pictures in the royal collection, was removed from St. James’s Palace in 1829, and given to the Greenwich Naval Hospital to form the nucleus of the National Gallery of Marine Paintings. Sir Thomas Hardy was to become governor of the hospital in 1832.

 As if to demonstrate that he was perfectly capable of drawing ships that were technically correct, in the next few years Turner included warships in watercolours he made to be engraved for publication in books of views. hms Victory is a central feature of Portsmouth c. 1825, for his “Ports of England” series; and ships form an important part of the subject of Dockyard, Devonport, Ships being paid off, c. 1827, which was for his series of “Picturesque Views in England and Wales.”107 These are straightforward representations, but Turner’s interest was changing. Toward the end of the war he had returned to the subject of decay and wreck, with oil paintings of The Wreck of a Transport Ship in 1810 and Hulks on the Tamar in 1812.108 This was to become a pervasive theme in postwar naval art, both because of the technical interest for artists of the great ships of the line reduced to humble purposes such as prison hulks, and because post-war disillusion found in them an effective allegory. In 1817 the French artist Jean Louis André Géricault exhibited in Paris his Raft of the Medusa, which used the subject – the abandonment at sea by their officers of a raft crowded with shipwrecked soldiers – as a biting comment on the restored monarchy of Louis XVIII. Three years later he brought the picture to London, where its great commercial success suggests that the British public were no less

J.M.W. Turner, A Ship Aground, Oil on canvas, support: 698 © Tate, London, 2004 n02065. (Photo: John Webb).

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interested in the theme. When, four years after his completion of Trafalgar, Turner painted another warship subject in oils, he painted a picture of A Ship Aground.109 In it his painting of the sea and sky are masterly. The send of the sea is true to shallow water. And in this composition the ship itself cannot be faulted. Turner continued to revisit the themes of storm, wreck, and disaster for the rest of his life. In 1831 he exhibited Fort Vimieux, or Scene on a French Coast, 1805, which depicted a ship hard aground with the sun setting behind her.110 The subject was supposedly taken from an episode in the war at sea in the year of Trafalgar. Turner identified it with a quotation supposedly from Naval Anecdotes: “In this arduous service (of Reconnoissance) on the French Coast, 1805, one of our cruisers took the ground, and had to sustain the attack of the Flying Artillery along shore, the Batteries, and the Fort of Vimieux which fired heated shot, until she could warp off at the rising tide which set in with all the appearance of a stormy night.” The reference, however, has not been found in the Naval Anecdotes section in the Naval Chronicle, nor in J. Cundee’s Naval Anecdotes of 1805. Never mind. The critic in the Library of the Fine Arts was greatly impressed: “The firing of red-hot shot, the sun of a bloody hue ‘low, deep and wan,’ the forlorn and frightened gull, the ball hissing in the water, and the stranded

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ship, present a vivid picture of the event, while the imagination of the ensemble is grand and stupendous. When will Mr. Turner show symptoms of decay? … his genius is still green as when we first saw it in the boyhood of our life.”111 Turner’s Life-Boat and Manby Apparatus – going off to a Stranded Vessel Making Signals (Blue Lights) of Distress, another picture of 1831, was also based on a wreck of 1805.112 The Manby apparatus used a mortar to project a lifeline to stranded ships. Fawkes’s death in 1825, and the recent death of Turner’s father, in 1829, no doubt contributed to his feeling of despair. The butcher’s bill amongst Turner’s friends and associates was beginning to lengthen, with the deaths of Turner’s oldest friend, William Frederick Wells, in 1836, and of his staunchest patron, Lord Egremont, the following year. If anything, this human drama intensified Turner’s creativity, but it did nothing to deflect his sombre mood. It was in this mood that Turner painted one of the great masterpieces of his later life, the melodramatic Fighting Téméraire, Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken Up, 1838.113 There is a report that Turner was on a steamer returning from Margate when, in passing Sheerness, the old ship was seen under tow to Beatson’s breaker’s yard at Rotherhithe. It is typical Turner, both because of the brilliant sunset, and because the old “ship of state” was being sold to private interests who were to profit from the scrap. The Téméraire had appeared in his 1806–08 Trafalgar, adding poignancy to the subject. To the picture he attached Thomas Campbell’s verse: “The flag which braved the battle and the breeze, no longer owns her.”114 Ruskin’s idea that the Téméraire was a final revisit to the Battle of Trafalgar has some merit. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1839, where it was seen by William Makepeace Thackeray, who reviewed it for Fraser’s Magazine, writing under the pseudonym of Michael Angelo Titmarsh Esq.: I must request you to turn your attention to a noble riverpiece by J.M.W. Turner, Esq., R.A., The Fighting Téméraire – as grand a painting as ever figured on the walls of any academy, or came from the easel of any painter. The old Téméraire is dragged to her last home by a little, spiteful, diabolical steamer. A mighty red sun, amidst a host of flaring clouds, sinks to rest on one side of the picture, and illumines a river that seems interminable, and a countless navy that fades away into such a wonderful distance as never was painted before. The little demon of a steamer is belching out a volume (why do I say a volume?

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not a hundred volumes could express it) of foul, lurid, red-hot, malignant smoke, paddling furiously, and lashing up the water round about it; while behind it (a cold gray moon looking down on it), slow, sad, and majestic, follows the brave old ship, with death, as it were, written on her.

Lest his readers think he had entirely taken leave of his senses, Thackeray added, “I must tell you, however, that Mr. Turner’s performances are for the most part quite incomprehensible to me.” “He has forsaken nature.” “Oh ye gods! why will he not stick to copying her majestical countenance?” His interest was really in the subject, not in the painting. He urged the establishment of some sort of museum which might preserve the remaining ships of the line.115 The reviewer in the Art Union felt no such need: “This is, perhaps, the most wonderful of all the works of the greatest master of the age; a picture which justifies the warmest enthusiasm: – the most fervent praise of which cannot incur the charge of exaggeration. We pity those, if there be such, who cannot enjoy it as we have done. It is a painted ‘ode,’ as fine and forcible as ever came from the pen of poet … The picture is, indeed, a nobly composed poem, – one to which the pen of genius can add nothing in the way of illustration.”116 Turner took liberties with his subject. The Téméraire had been reduced first to a prison ship, and then to a receiving ship, for which purposes it is likely she would have had her masts removed.117 Stanfield pointed out to Robert Leslie that when Thomas Duncan, a Scots history painter – “some mechanical marine artist or other” – made an engraving of the Téméraire, he “trimmed up and generally made intelligible” the rigging. He had also felt it necessary to move the tugboat’s funnel abaft her mast, where it would have been placed by the naval architect: “The black funnel of the tug in the engraving is placed abaft her mast or flagpole, instead of before it, as in Turner’s picture; his first, strong, almost prophetic idea of smoke, soot, iron, and steam, coming to the front in all naval matters, being thus changed and, I venture to think, weakened by this alteration.” The conflict between seamanship and art was to torment Turner to the end. Leslie remembers that on a visit to Turner’s studio with his father, probably in the early 1840s, they took with them Elisha Morgan, an American sea captain who commanded a Black X Line sailing packet. Turner was very polite, evidently looking up to the sailor’s capacity, and making many little apologies for the want of ropes and other details about certain

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vessels in a picture. No one knew or felt, I think, better than Turner the want of these mechanical details, and while the sea captain was there he paid no attention to any one else, but followed him about the gallery, bent upon hearing all he said. As it turned out, this captain and he became good friends, for the Yankee skipper’s eyes were sharp enough to see through all the fog and mystery of Turner, how much of real sea feeling there was in him and his work. Captain Morgan, who was a great friend of Dickens, my father, and many other artists, used to send Turner a box of cigars almost every voyage after that visit to Queen Anne Street.118

Robert Leslie was himself to follow Turner’s path, to the extent that he purchased an old boat from which to sketch Thames scenes.

 The next year Turner painted what some consider his greatest masterpiece, a savage image of Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhone Coming on. This desperate scene, the foreground filled with the bodies of chained slaves sinking beneath the tormented sea, and in the distance the slave ship picked out blood-red against a saffron sky, so disturbed Ruskin who was its first owner, that he sold it. This time Thackeray was not distracted by the subject, and simply hated the picture: “Is the picture sublime or ridiculous? Indeed I don’t know which. Rocks of gamboge are marked down upon the canvass; flakes of white laid on with a trowel; bladders of vermilion madly spirited here and there. Yonder is the slaver rocking in the midst of a flashing foam of white lead. The sun glares down upon a horrible sea of emerald and purple, into which chocolate-coloured slaves are plunged, and chains that will not sink; and round these are floundering such a race of fishes as never was seen.”119 This picture was followed in 1841 by Peace-Burial at Sea. In it Turner used moonlight, a flaring lantern, and smoke to lend drama to a tribute to his artist friend Sir David Wilkie, who was buried at sea.120 The sombre mood of Peace is the flip side of the anger of Slavers. It is an impressionistic picture of very great power, one of Turner’s great leaps forward, but it left Thackeray behind. He suggested that “when the pictures are re-hung, as sometime I believe is the case, it might perhaps be as well to turn these upside down, and see how they would look then.”121 Another canvas of his last years, Rockets and Blue Lights (close at Hand) to warn Steam-Boats of Shoal Water 1840, continued the theme of

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wreck, and in 1842 the experience in the storm at sea led to the painting of Snow Storm.122

 When the first volume of Modern Painters was published anonymously “by a Graduate of Oxford,” the Athenaeum’s reviewer ridiculed Ruskin’s thesis “that, in brief, Mr. J.W. Turner is supreme Art personified, the God of Landscape-painting incarnate!”123 Ruskin’s work was certainly unbalanced, and inconsistent: “There is too much reasoning in this book, without the higher qualities of reasoning, which are clearness and conclusiveness, subordination of parts, and able summation of the whole.” But Ruskin had seen much that eluded the less gifted. And as he put it in the concluding passages of Modern Painters: “What Turner might have done for us, had he received help and love, instead of disdain, I can hardly trust myself to imagine. Increasing calmly in power and loveliness, his work would have formed one mighty series of poems, … becoming brighter and kinder as he advanced to happy age.”124 That “disdain” had not prevented Turner from becoming one of the very few wealthy artists, but it is true that he had needed to overcome, first the effects of an Academy education, and later the natural conservatism of the majority of his public. In another letter from Michael Angelo Titmarsh in 1845, Thackeray had admitted that there was more to Turner than he could readily grasp: “Go up and look at one of his pictures, and you laugh at yourself and at him, and at the picture, and that wonderful amateur who is invariably found to give a thousand pounds for it, or more – some sum wild, prodigious, unheard-of, monstrous, like the picture itself. All about the author of the Fallacies of Hope is a mysterious extravaganza; price, poem, purchaser, picture. Look at the latter for a little time, and it begins to affect you too.”125 Turner was not finally able to shake off the restraints on his creativity until the 1830s. Long before that, however, he had been recognized as a painter of the first importance, and had stimulated the artistic development of a generation. He died in 1851, and was at his request buried at St Paul’s, as close to Sir Joshua Reynolds as was possible.126

Ten P o s t wa r Pa i n t e r s

Turner’s importance in the naval and maritime art of the postwar world was increased by mortality thinning the first rank of the old guard. De Loutherbourg did not paint a naval subject after his Trafalgar and had died on 11 March 1812, greatly lamented by his friends and leaving an estate to his wife rumoured to amount to £7,000.1 The “Nelsons” were the last naval pictures by the doyen of history painting, Benjamin West, as they had been his first. When he died in 1820 he left an estate of £100,000. His son Raphael hoped the Greenwich Hospital could be persuaded to purchase the Death of Lord Nelson, but it was eventually to go to Liverpool.2 Pocock was soon to follow de Loutherbourg and West to the grave, dying a few weeks after Farington’s accidental death in February 1821. Pocock had been forced to retire to Bath in 1817 to nurse some form of paralysis, and died on 19 March 1821. His younger son, William Innes, had been commissioned a lieutenant in the navy in 1811, and his elder son, Isaac, continued to progress in the world of the arts. In 1809 Isaac had been honoured by the British Institution with a commission to paint a transparency. Robert Hunt wrote condescendingly that it “was better than was expected.”3 His most important contribution to the arts of naval victory is the portrait he painted of his father.4 Others of the wartime cohort, however, continued to work in the arts of naval victory. Whitcombe survived until 1827. Anderson did not die until 1837, and three years earlier had exhibited at the Royal Academy his painting of Lord Howe’s fleet off Spithead.5 It is not known when Buttersworth died, because he had a son who was also named Thomas, and another christened James Edward, both of whom were marine painters. It is possible that the elder Buttersworth eventually emigrated

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to the United States, where his sons were to have careers, but it is not known when he might have made the trip. It would not have been before 1822, however, because he was another who painted a picture of the royal visit to Edinburgh in that year.6 The younger Thomas died in 1842 at the age of thirty five.7 It is known that James Edward settled at Hoboken near New York between 1845 and 1847.8 Samuel Drummond was to live the longest, and he alone continued to apply the traditions of eighteenth-century history painting to naval subjects, although his work was to be increasingly influenced by his radical opinions. In 1815 he exhibited a picture of Jack Tar Spending his Prize Money, and in 1818 The Neglected Tar.9 These subjects, the heroism and humanity of ordinary seamen, could hardly have been farther removed from classical standards. In 1825 he brought the Death of Nelson picture out again for the British Institution prize competition, and won despite the fact that the picture lacked any of the tactical detail usually expected of a battle picture.10 He may have changed its name to qualify for the prize, and this may have confused The Examiner’s critic, Robert Hunt. But he was not to get his money without doing new work for it. The British Institution decided that it would not pay him to “finish” his already long-completed picture. Their reason, ostensibly, was that Sir Charles Long had “represented to the Committee, that Lord Bexley had [already] presented Greenwich Hospital with a Picture painted by M. Davis [i.e., Devis] of the ‘Death of Lord Nelson.’” They therefore resolved, with breath-taking arrogance, “That Mr. Drummond be directed to paint a Picture of Lord Duncan’s Victory off Camperdown, instead of the Death of Lord Nelson, but of the same size, & upon the same terms as that previously ordered by the Directors.”11 Long was a politician who had served in the privy council, and the interest he took in the arts was not an unmixed blessing. His wife was Girtin’s favourite pupil and a very fine amateur painter. After his retirement and elevation to the peerage as Lord Farnborough in 1826, he had concentrated on his own artistic interests, and was one of the moving forces behind the establishment of a National Naval Gallery at Greenwich Hospital. Haydon claimed that the idea for a naval gallery had originated with a suggestion he had made to Long that he be employed to decorate the Admiralty: “This plan originated with me. Lord Farnborough had the meanness to decline my plan for the Admiralty, & adopt it, without reference to me, at Greenwich.”12 There certainly is a common thread. The British Institution’s commissions for commemorative

Samuel Drummond, Admiral Duncan Receiving the Sword of the Dutch Admiral de Winter after the Battle of Camperdown, Oil on Canvas, 80⬙ ⫻ 107⬙, © nmm bhc 0506. Greenwich Hospital Collection.

history paintings of naval actions were consistent with Haydon’s ideas, and the paintings were eventually presented to the gallery at the Greenwich Hospital. The arbitrary manner in which the Institution substituted its commissions – and trampled on Drummond’s chance of realizing an income from his work – goes a long way to explain why his Admiral Duncan Receiving the Sword of the Dutch Admiral de Winter after the Battle of Camperdown is so obviously a derivative piece.13 The picture clearly smells of Copley’s lamp. Measuring 80⬙ by 107⬙, it is the same scene on the Venerable’s deck as Copley had devised, with the admirals elegantly posed, the ship’s people crowded around to see the surrender, and a view of the contending fleets. The picture is not just a copy of Copley’s, however. In one respect Drummond had improved on Copley’s subject because the sauve tête net is rigged. The treatment of the subject is also

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unique. Drummond draws the viewer’s eyes aloft by crowding seamen into the rigging to an extent that almost suggests a ceiling painting. Unlike Copley, Drummond did not give any of the persona true likenesses. He obviously worked from models, and created strong images which may be thought to surpass Copley’s work. Drummond’s version of Admiral Duncan Receiving the Sword displayed much more interest in the common sailor than had the Copley model, even showing on the forearms of a young sailor the hypertrophic or keloided scars caused by splinter wounds that healed badly due to scurvy.14 The directors of the Institution were evidently pleased with the result, for the final installments owed to Drummond and to George Arnald for his Battle of the Nile, with an additional £50 each for their trouble, was paid on 14 March 1827. A few months later, however, in June 1827, when the British Institution commissioned two further commemorative pictures, both commissions went to artists who had never painted a naval subject and were never to paint another. The Board seems to have been confused about who it commissioned to paint what subject. In its minutes it is stated that W. Briggs was asked to paint Lord St. Vincent’s Victory, and W. Jones to paint His Late Majesty giving the Sword to Lord Howe on board the Queen Charlotte after the Victory of 1 June 1794.15 Actually, it was Henry Perronet Briggs, a relative of John Opie’s wife and at the time an associate of the Academy, who painted George III presenting the Sword to Earl Howe.16 Briggs’s composition was clearly influenced by Drummond, the people being stacked vertically on different levels. But unlike Drummond, Briggs fills his picture only with the rich and beautiful. George Jones, who had been elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1822 and a full member in 1824, completed a picture of The Battle of Cape St. Vincent – Nelson boarding the San Joseph.17 Jones was a soldier who had fought in the Peninsular campaign, and is better known for his pictures of military subjects, including the Vittoria he had painted alongside Turner for St James’s Palace. Both pictures were exhibited at the British Gallery in 1829, and both were presented to Greenwich Hospital. Perhaps Drummond’s interest in the common man, who could not pay for his work, is the reason his financial position became very difficult in later life. He had frequently to obtain assistance from the funds of the Academy. But his own troubles seem to have sustained his social conscience. In 1830 he was to exhibit Shipwrecked Mariners, or some of the Crew of the “Santissima Trinidada” who were Saved by the Eng-

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lish after the Victory of Trafalgar, and in 1839 The Sailor’s Wife, “On Distant Sail her Eyes … etc.18 He died in 1844, leaving no professional heir to continue to seek the sublime in the lives of common seamen.

 William Daniell’s work as an artist of naval victory continued into the years of peace. Despite the lobbying efforts of his uncle Thomas, William was not to be elected a full member of the Royal Academy until 1822, when he beat out Constable.19 In 1821 he had exhibited an oil painting of Ships Scudding, but his election was based largely on the reputation of his topographical prints even though Academy rules limited printmakers to associate status. The marine work for which he is best known is a collection of engravings of British coastal scenes which were published over a period of twelve years from 1813 as A Voyage Round Great Britain. The drawings were made on a succession of expeditions to the coast, and were mostly made from the cliffs, but occasionally from local boats.20 The work was so exacting, and the scale so large, that for several years there was little opportunity to undertake anything else. In the first two summers he walked with a friend, Richard Ayton, from Land’s End in Cornwall up the west coast of England and Wales into Scotland. Ayton wrote about the primative, and often quite brutal, communities he encountered, and Daniell made sketches for aquatints. But he did not share Ayton’s concern for the hard realities of child labour and poverty. Perhaps for that reason, Ayton lost interest in the venture, but in Daniell continued his walk in 1818. Walter Scott had provided him with the names of people who would welcome him, and the weather was so exceptionally fine that he was able to trace all the mainland and some of the islands of Scotland that year as far as St Andrew’s. On the Clyde he saw, and rode on, his first steam boat.21 Further north, conditions were more primitive, and Daniell was literally carried across the Ilan Dreoch on the back of “a robust highland female.” He was not able to continue his circumpedition until 1821, but by the end of the summer of 1823 he was back at Land’s End. The completed project was a remarkable artistic achievement, as well as a test of personal endurance. That project completed, William Daniell turned again to true marines, including several of naval subjects. In 1822, soon after his election to the Academy, he exhibited an oil painting of The English Fleet at Trafalgar, another of The Battle of Trafalgar, and a third of The Battle of the

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Nile. The last two were presumably the pictures exhibited again in 1825 for the British Institution competition and noticed with praise by The Examiner.22 In May 1826 he was awarded the Institution’s second prize for the Trafalgar picture.23 In 1823 and 1824 he published five more aquatints of scenes from his voyages on the Indiamen. In 1823 Daniell painted his An East Indiaman in a gale off the Cape of Good Hope, based on his own experience. The mountainous seas of the southern latitudes were vividly portrayed by a man who had been there and seen it as it is. The experience – and the execution of the subject – are purely his. Nevertheless, the change in his approach to marine painting from his Dance prints of sixteen years before, with so much more attention being paid to the sea and sky, suggests that he too had been influenced by Turner’s studies of the maritime elements. The next year he painted another picture “from authentic information,” of the Kent, East Indiaman, on Fire in the Bay of Biscay, which he also made into an aquatint, and in 1826 he exhibited a companion picture of the survivors being taken on board by the brig Cambria. The reviewer in the Literary Gazette wrote in January 1825: “Mr. Daniell’s Engraving of An Indiaman in a North-Wester, and A Man Overboard, off the Cape, have made every lover of the Fine Arts acquainted with his tremendous powers and appalling fidelity in subjects of this description.” The picture being reviewed was Daniell’s latest, A Ship on her Beam Ends in the Bay of Biscay, which had been engraved from a sketch “made on the spot by Mr. Samuel Daniell,” who was Daniell’s younger brother. Samuel was himself in intrepid traveller who had visited Cape Town during the British occupancy in 1801, when he penetrated the interior as far as Lataku. He had died of disease in 1811 while exploring Sri Lanka.24 In 1828 William Daniell painted a canvas of The Battle of Navarino, and engraved a plate that Ackermann published.25 And in 1831 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a pair of paintings celebrating the service life of Admiral Collingwood, Trafalgar and Cape St. Vincent, and a third painting of A First Rater going down the Channel.26 Whether this Trafalgar was a new or a recycled painting is unknown.

 More important than William Daniell in the postwar arts of naval victory was to be Thomas Luny. He was not a young man, nor even a late starter in the world of naval art, but for obscure reasons he did not come

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William Daniell, artist and publisher with Robinson Hurst and Co., Off the Cape – A Man Overboard. From a picture by Wm. Daniell, R.A. aquatint. 311 ⫻ 495mm, 1 June 1824. bm 166.6.20

into his own until late in the war. He was to become an important figure in the decades that followed. His early life is rather shadowy, but it is known that he was baptised at St Ewe near St Austell, Cornwall on 20 May 1759.27 It appears that the family soon moved to London, and that when Thomas was old enough he may have gone to work in the docks. When his skill at drawing was noticed is not known; the tentative date of 1763 attached to his oldest surviving sketch book is scarcely credible.28 It is believed that he was a pupil of Francis Holman, a marine painter, because in 1777 and 1778 he sent pictures to the Society of Artists’ exhibitions using Holman’s address. In about 1780 he set up on his own in Anchor and Hope Street in Woolwich. Such an address sounds ideal for a struggling young marine artist, but it was isolated from his market. Within a few years he apparently moved to Leadenhall Street, where in 1783 he sent pictures to the Free Society of Artists from the address of a Mr Merle, a carver, gilder, and picture-frame maker who was to remain one of Luny’s dealers. As the headquarters of the East India Company were located in Leadenhall Street, it was a

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Thomas Luny, Self-Portrait, Courtesy Teignmouth Town Council.

good address for a marine painter, and much of Luny’s work was either commissioned or sold directly from his studio without ever being exhibited. He profited to such an extent that in 1791 he was able to purchase property at 16 Mark Lane between Leadenhall Street and the Thames, and in January 1795 he opened a long-term investment account in Government Stocks. Luny’s success in obtaining commissions could be the explanation for the fact that he did not exhibit any picture between the outbreak of war and 1802, when he exhibited at the Academy a picture of the Battle of the Nile.29 It is just possible that this interval indicated that Luny served in the navy, and only returned to his easel when the Peace of Amiens put him on the beach. But it is unsafe to argue from the negative evidence of the lack of exhibitions, and no record of naval service for Luny has been found. Neither was he employed in Deptford Yard, nor by the East India Company.30 A more convincing argument for

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Luny’s possible naval service is the technical strength of his naval pictures, which at least suggests that he might have spent some of those years onboard warships. Luny’s sketches from this period, which included topographical notes of the Bay of Naples, Ischia, Gibraltar, and Charleston, South Carolina, have the appearance of work done on the spot.31 It is also apparent that he was at work in his studio in the summer of 1794. Two aquatint prints based on his paintings of the Glorious First of June were published on the first of November of that year.32 Apart from topographical notes and sketches of ships, Luny’s sketchbooks contain detailed written notes about the ships that were to be subjects of his paintings. The first of his books, now in the possession of the National Maritime Museum, is a fine example: A 74 gun ship Stern is 28 Feet high when she swims with the Bottom of the Wale even; Breadth 32 feet, / A Ship of War’s Main Top Sail is as Square at the Head as Deep / The Rule of Masts makes for the Head of the Masts to the Checks is one Eight of the whole, So that ye mast Head is a little more then one fifth of the whole Top mast, No Ship at Chatam mast [? crane] is above the Water 90 feet – Extream Breadth of a 74 Gun Ship is 47 feet 6 inches / Breadth of a Man of War’s Main Top is one Third the Lenth of the Top mast. – N.B. a 74 Gun Ship, the top mast head above the Water is 3 times the Extream Breadth, and 8 times and 1 Quarter the Depth from ye Bottom Wale to the Top of the Gunnel, Bottom of the Wale to the top of the Gunnel is 17 feet 6 inches, and 5 and ½ Quarter the Depth of the Stern, Depth of the Stern is 28 Feet.33

The address from which Luny sent his Nile to the Academy was 1 Villiers St, Teignmouth, and from 1807 his residence has been established as being in Teignmouth, where he remained for the rest of his life. Whether or not he was invalided out of the navy in that year as it was once believed, it is a fact that Luny laboured through the latter part of his life a victim of gout or rheumatoid arthritis.34 His move from London may have been motivated by the greater warmth of the south coast, and Teignmouth was attracting many retired seamen who would take an interest in his work. Luny continued to send pictures to Mr Merle in London until 1817, but he also acquired dealers in the west: a Mr Thompson who was a print seller in Oxford, a Mr Norton of Corn Street Bristol who over the years took 227 of Luny’s paintings for resale, a Mr Tucker and a Mr Cole in Exeter, and a Mr Rogers in Plymouth.

Thomas Luny, The Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798, oil, 35⬙ © nmm bhc 0512.

⫻

47⬙,

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Life must have been difficult for Luny as his disease eventually paralysed his legs and contorted his hands so that he had no grip and was forced to use a wheelchair. Robert Dymond reported in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association in 1886 that: “Mr. J. Hayman Whiteway, of Brookfield, Teignmouth, whose testimony is confirmed by many old townsmen, knew Luny between the years 1825–9, and describes him as an elderly invalid, who would have seemed of medium height had he not been deprived by paralysis of the use of his lower limbs. He is spoken of as a man of broad and well-nurtured frame, of fair and somewhat florid complexion; not easily drawn into conversation, but of kindly nature, and pleasant in his manner with children.”35 Dymond also reported a childhood recollection of a Mr P.O. Hutchinson, who remembered seeing an elderly gentleman in a three-wheel chair, pushed along by a man-servant behind: I was told that this was Mr. Luny, and I understood that he was defective, or suffering from some sort of malformation in his feet, which impaired his natural locomotion, and compelled him to use this chair. At this time he was about 60 years old. In 1819 or 1820, when I was a boy of eight or nine, an uncle of mine, who was then in Teignmouth, took me to Luny’s house to see his paintings. I quite forget where the house was; I was too young and unobservant to notice localities. We were shown up into his studio or paintingroom, and this I can recall to memory pretty well. The fire-place, I think, was in the wall opposite the door where we entered; but it was nearly hidden behind stools, portfolios, canvas on frames &c. On the floor, round the walls, and on a few chairs, were a number of paintings in all states of progress and finish. One, just sketched out, a first draft of a storm, on a chair near the righthand corner of the room, I thought was too white, with a superabundance of froth and foam, and my uncle remarked it too … Luny himself sat at a table between the fireplace and window, the light coming in on his left side, and his back turned somewhat towards the door. He and my uncle exchanged greetings when we entered. He was not, however, disposed to talk; but went on with his work, leaving us to look about and examine anything we liked … He was at work on a picture about 20 inches wide by 15 inches high, some eight or ten inches on the table, supported on a small easel, with a palette or slab for his colours between him and the canvas, or towards his right, with brushes, bottles &c. close by. But what surprised me most was, he had no hands. His wrists ended not in two fists, but in two egg-shaped lumps, and he held his long-handled brush between these

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two lumps, which I clearly saw, as he had no gloves on. I think there were marks or creases on these lumps as if there were rudiments of undeveloped fingers inside.36

Another account by a Mrs Capes preserved in the Teignmouth Museum is that her grandmother as a young girl “used to help prepare Luny’s brushes which a servant would then attach by a strap to Luny’s wrist.”37 “Devon,” a poem published in 1825 by J. Gompert, notes that Luny was “the more remarkable for being so great an invalid, and martyr to the Rheumatic Gout, as to be nearly deprived of the use of his members, and [was] under the necessity of having even his pencil put into his hand.”38 Luny found several naval officers in Teignmouth as patrons. Among them was George Tobin, who had retired as a Rear Admiral. Dymond believed that Luny had once served under Tobin as a purser, but no documentary evidence has been found to support this idea. There is a strong possibly, however, that Luny had sailed with Tobin as a guest in his first command, the Northumberland, or in the Princess Charlotte frigate after September 1805. Princess Charlotte was employed on the West Indies and Irish Stations. It cannot have been from her decks that Luny saw the Mediterranean, but his voyaging during the war may have been more extensive. Another of Luny’s patrons was Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, for whom Luny painted a picture of “The Bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816.”39 Other patrons of Luny’s work were Captain John Wight, who retired in 1837 as a Rear Admiral the year Luny died, one of the captains Brine, and Lieutenant James Spratt, who retired as a captain in 1838. Evidently their commissions, and his sales through dealers, ensured that Luny continued to prosper. He set about building a new house in Old Market Street, the present Teign Street, where he lived and worked until his death in 1837. It was rated for taxes amongst the most expensive six of the parish’s 233 ratable houses, at nearly 40 percent the rate of Viscount Exmouth’s residence now known as Bitton House. He sold some of his government stocks, no doubt to pay for his home but did not sell his London house, which presumably was providing rents.40 Luny’s pictures of the Glorious First of June are nicely composed from a quarterdeck perspective, but his representation of the sea is anything but convincing. His Nile is a conventional painting of Nelson’s battle

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line, in remarkably good order considering the speed of the approach, silhouetted against the setting sun just as it brought the anchored French between two fires. The ships all appear to be correctly rigged, which no doubt appealed to the sailors, who may also have warmed to the rather idealized station-keeping. Luny was not very successful in representing the sea, which is methodically rippled but shows no turbulence from the advance of the fleet. In 1825 he returned to the subject, contributing pictures of the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar to the British Institution competition.41 Another Luny painting dating from 1802 and now in the National Maritime Museum, The Castor and other Merchant Ships, a very conventional sea piece, is equally weak on atmospherics.42 It is evident, however, that despite his isolation in Teignmouth and his disability, Luny was following the work of other artists and learning from them. Even his early Teignmouth pictures show more interest in the sea, and by the time he painted The Wreck of the Dutton in 1821 he had learned a great deal about the painting of sea and sky in a hard gale, and his use of light was clearly influenced by Turner. The picture was probably painted for Exmouth, who was the hero of the story. Luny based his composition on the engraving made of Pocock’s painting in the year of the wreck, but Luny’s figures are better drawn.43 He was a good workman artist, and before the invention of photographic reproduction no one thought the worse of an artist for making use of the ideas and insights of others in order to produce the art people needed. His The Loss of the Brig Warren near Teignmouth in Devon of 1828 also shows, especially in his handling of light, the influence of Turner.44 The Exeter City Museum has an extensive collection of Luny paintings, mostly of topographical subjects. The National Maritime Museum possesses an impressive picture Luny painted of the battle of Navarino, 20 October 1827, the last battle ever between fleets entirely propelled by sail.45 Although Navarino is, strictly speaking, outside the context of this book, it cannot be entirely ignored, if only because painters from the Napoleonic conflict were amongst those who worked with the subject. Ramsay Richard Reinagle’s son George Philip was an eye witness to the battle from the deck of hms Mosquito. On his return home he drew on stone and published in 1828 two books of lithographs: Illustrations of the Battle of Navarino, and Illustrations of the Occurences at the Entrances of the Bay of Patras between the English Squadron and the Turkish Fleets, 1827. During the

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next three years he painted pictures of incidents from this campaign, and in 1833 he was again to be a witness to naval action when Admiral Sir Charles Napier was given command of the fleet of the liberal Pedro IV of Portugal. Napier defeated the forces of the absolutist Don Miguel, and the following year George Philip exhibited at the Royal Academy Admiral Napier’s Glorious Triumph over the Miguelite Squadron.46 In 1835 Luny exhibited at the Academy four paintings of naval subjects, but these were to be his last. He died in 1837 at the age of seventy-eight, and that June a gallery in Bond Street, London, exhibited 130 of his canvasses.47 He left an estate of £14,000.48

 The influence Turner exerted on the atmospherics of postwar painting, and his lead role in the development of the Romantic school, can be seen in the work of other marine painters who took little or no interest in naval subjects. The appeal of the sea was strong enough in the postwar era of Pax Britannica that artists who had no particular connection with the sea found interest, and opportunity, in painting seascapes. The sea itself and the small craft that worked on it were the main thrust of this development, although the epic battles at sea were a driving force behind the interest in marine painting. Minor painters like John Whichelo, who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1810, painted one or two marine and naval pictures.49 A much more important artist was Samuel Prout, whose childhood fascination with The Wreck of the Dutton and possible meeting with Pocock was the basis of his career as an artist. Like Luny, although probably to a lesser extent, he was an invalid, and also like Luny he made his career in the West Country. After a brief stay in London, he had returned to Plymouth in 1805 where the following year was born his son, John S., who was also to become a marine artist. In 1838 Prout was to write to Stanfield from Hastings, and in July 1841 he called on Haydon, who chose to regard the visit as flattery: “Prout, my oldest … friend in the Art, who has never called for 20 years, called today. As I said of Wilkie, when Prout calls a man must be supposed to be doing well.”50 Prout’s pictures are less finished than Luny’s, but for that very reason have an exciting freshness to them.51 He exhibited paintings at the Academy, the British Institution, and the “Old” Water-Colour Society.52 The National Maritime Museum possesses several of Prout’s lovely graphite

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sketches, including a detail of a ship in the early stages of construction.53 Ruskin’s opinion was that “of all our modern school of landscape painters, next to Turner, and before the rise of the Pre-Raphaelites, the man whose works are on the whole most valuable, and show the highest intellect, is Samuel Prout. It is very notable that also in Prout’s early studies, shipping subjects took not merely a prominent, but I think even a principal place.”54 Prout’s picture of the prison hulk was engraved by George Cooke.55 Apart from this subject, however, Prout cannot be considered as one of the artists of naval victory. Nor should Augustus Wall Callcott be, but his interest in maritime subjects makes him part of the community of naval artists. The address where he was born and was to spend all his life apart from an extended honeymoon on the continent, Kensington Gravel Pits, was about as unmaritime as it is possible to find in England. In 1827 he married a widow of a naval officer, Maria Graham, but he never painted a naval subject. He cannot be regarded as one of the artists of naval victory, but his painting of marine subjects and his support of Turner’s painting, which led to attacks on his own work, put him into the picture. He had studied at the Academy under John Hoppner, exhibited his first painting there in 1799, and was part of Girtin’s drawing group. His work was criticized by Constable as “too much a work of art & labour, not an effusion,” but given Constable’s criticism of Bonington for his youthful mastery it is Constable himself who is thrown in a poor light.56 Thomas Hearne, another who had worked in early life sketching for the nobility on their travels, and who later did much to establish interest in English gothic architecture by a series of fifty-two watercolour sketches of “The Antiquities of Great Britain,” commented acerbically to Farington that Callcott “had no strength of colour, – no freshness, – foggy – weak – a crowd of Cattle ill-suited to it. – He had done some coast scenes, imitating Turner, pretty well; He now does not look at nature.”57 Hearne was one of the masters, and Turner and Girtin had copied his drawings at Dr Monro’s, but in this instance he was being rather bitchy. Callcott was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1806, and was to be elected a full member in 1810. He was one of Turner’s more committed supporters. One of his better works, The Pool of London, which he painted in 1816, may even have had some influence over Turner. Willliam Henry Pyne, writing as Ephraim Hardcastle, reported the anecdote that “Turner … on being told that Callcott had painted one

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of his finest scenes on the Thames, on commission, for two hundred guineas, observed in the presence of several patrons of the fine arts, ‘Had I been deputed to set a value upon that picture I should have awarded a thousand.’”58 The reflectivity of the surface of the water in this picture, and the way Callcott used floating material to give it character, might have pleased Ruskin, but he makes no comment. A Dutch boat that formed part of its composition possibly served as a model for the Dort packet boat in Turner’s Dordrecht, which he exhibited in 1818.59 Callcott was socially adroit, and was to be knighted in 1837. Another talented painter who took to painting marine subjects under the influence of Turner was Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, third son of portrait painter Theodore Nathan Fielding. He had been born in East Sowerby, near Halifax, but his family moved to London, and then to the Lake District, where his father taught him to draw. In 1807 he began to exhibit in Liverpool, and in 1809 he moved to London and became a pupil of John Varley. He worked mainly in watercolour and in 1810 was elected an associate of the Old Water-Colour Society, where he exhibited. He mostly undertook topographical subjects, but there were some marine subjects, and he acquired a reputation for his painting of the sea. He married Varley’s sister-in-law, Susannah Gisborne, in 1813. Copley Fielding was one of the few painters Ruskin thought fit to include in his eulogy of Turner which, for market reasons, he had expanded and entitled Modern Painters: It is with his sea as with his sky, he can only paint one, and that an easy one, but it is, for all that, an impressive and a true one. No man has ever given, with the same flashing freedom, the race of a running tide under a stiff breeze, nor caught, with the same grace and precision, the curvature of the breaking wave, arrested or accelerated by the wind. The forward fling of his foam, and the impatient run of his surges, whose quick, redoubling dash we can almost hear, as they break in their haste upon their own bosoms, are nature itself, and his sea gray or green was, nine years ago, very right, as color; always a little wanting in transparency, but never cold or toneless. Since that time, he seems to have lost the sense of greenness in water, and has verged more and more on the purple and black, with unhappy results.60

A sailor viewing Copley Fielding’s Bridlington Harbour of 1837, or his Fishing Smacks: Storm Coming On of 1843, would be inclined to share Ruskin’s enthusiasm, and be glad to be ashore with a dry skin.

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Yet another postwar artisit worthy of brief mention is Charles Henry Seaforth. Although he was not thought to have ever been a sailor, he specialized in naval subjects. He was born in Naples in 1801, and it is interesting to speculate that the role of the Royal Navy in his city’s turbulent history during his childhood may have been the inspiration for his choice. He came to London and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1822, where he became a student the following year. His paintings are identifiably of the Romantic era, but he tended toward “realism.” He liked to paint in a large scale. His Part of the Battle of Trafalgar, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1838, is one of his more admired paintings, but it is a rather brittle piece that conveys little or nothing of the passion of battle and suggests a posed collection of models.61 He published an attractive lithographic print of the battle, which is based on the same oil painting but differs in several details.62 John Sell Cotman continued his interest in marine pictures in the postwar years, as a counterpoint to his exacting topographical and architectural work. He did not paint any more naval subjects after those of 1807–08, but he played an important part in the lives of others who did. His interest in the sea was strongly emotional, and was stimulated by ocean voyaging, most notably in his own yacht, Jessie. Cotman was made secretary of the Norwich Society of Artists, in 1810 its vice-president, and president the next year, but he did not prosper. His marriage in 1809 to Ann Miles made it essential that he increase his income, and Dawson Turner persuaded him to move to Great Yarmouth to teach his family, and to undertake the task of making engravings from original drawings of the medieval ruins in East Anglia. His first book was published in 1817, and he virtually abandoned painting for a decade. Turner had no interest in the drawings themselves, and many of them were purchased by the Reverend James Bulwer.63 Cotman described his new home to Francis Cholmeley in a letter on 13 April 1812: “My small garden in front leads me on to the road … Then, a green meadow, then the river along the banks of which, directly before my house, lies the condemned vessels of every nation, rigged and unrigged in the most picturesque manner possible. Then our merchan[t] vessels from an Indiaman, Greenlandman, to a collier pass and repass every ebb and flow of tide … From my house in a line across the downs we reach the sea in about 3/4 of a mile, on which rides at time[s] the Navey [sic] dimly moved [i.e., moves] in view. Today at sea a frigate and open brigg c[o]me to anchor.”64 He pur-

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chased a vessel with some sort of cabin amidships, the Jessie, in which he and his sons explored the inland waterways leading from Breydon Water to the Norfolk Broads, and out to sea along the east coast to the Thames and Medway. In 1817, after the defeat of Napoleon, Cotman was persuaded by Dawson Turner to undertake a trip to Normandy to make sketches of Romanesque architecture which would later be turned into etchings. He was to make literally hundreds of drawings, and to return the following year with the Turner family, and again in 1820. He could not speak French, and was reduced to drawing sketches of his wants to make himself understood. He crossed over to Dieppe by the packet, and travelled as far as Mont St Michel, to which he crossed over on the sands, and from which he apparently fled in haste, overwhelmed by its dark past. He returned from Le Havre in the packet to Southampton, and wrote enthusiastically about the rough sea conditions they experienced: “Though the passage was a boisterous one, to me it was a new scene of grandeur and sublimity … At one time the vessel flew through the water with the lightness and swiftness of a swallow encompassed all around with the blazing sea that was perfectly luminous.” When becalmed off the Isle of Wight he made sketches which he later used in painting one of his greatest marine masterpieces, The Needles. This shows that sea approach in a very different mood from the similar subject painted by J.M.W. Turner.65 The sketch Cotman had made of the West Front of Rouen Cathedral was to form the basis of an engraving on which he worked for six months, only to sell it for £100. The ceaseless and scarcely rewarded labour of his life, and the sight of his family’s penury, brought on acute depression. Martin Hardie, the great scholar of English watercolour painters, writes of Cotman falling “victim to what was known as Accidie, one of the seven deadly sins, a collapse into mental misery, black despair, and hopeless unbelief.”66 In 1823 he moved back to Norwich and re-established his school, but continued to be crippled by poverty. He fell desperately ill, and was despaired of by his family, until Varley paid a call. Varley was an astrologer with a remarkable record. “‘Pooh! Nonsense!’ he replied to Mrs. Cotman. ‘They know nothing about it. His time is a long way off. Let me see him.’ To Cotman he said ‘Why, Cotman, you’re not such a fool as to think you’re going to die! Impossible! No such thing! I tell you there are twenty years for you yet to come.’” He was indeed to live nearly twenty more years.

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Martin Hardie doesn’t even notice Cotman’s life as a yachtsman, which was a source of joy but also had its practical purposes. In 1828 Cotman made a sketching voyage with his two sons to London, sailing by way of Lowestoft, Southwold, and the Medway. They spent Christmas with George Cooke and his family. Cooke’s son Edward William, then aged seventeen, was to become one of the greatest interpreters of naval subjects to Victorian England. Cotman helped him with one of his compositions. When in 1828–29 Edward published his first, and masterful, book of etchings, Fifty Plates of Shipping and Craft, Cotman’s influence could be discerned.67 Turner’s work was also important to Edward Cooke. His father, who engraved Turner’s series of pictures of the South Coast, gave him a Turner painting to mark his twenty-first birthday.68 In 1831 Cotman, with his eldest son, Miles Edmund, made another voyage to London, and lay afloat above Tower Bridge while they sketched in the area. Then they returned to the Medway for more sketching before sailing back to Great Yarmouth, Breydon Water, and up the Yare. A watercolour he painted in 1834, Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames, is compositionally somewhat like Turner’s paintings from thirty years previously, even to the presence of the Nore guardship in the background. The style of Cotman’s painting of sea and sky is very much his own, and one he had mastered, but unfortunately the Dutch boat in the foreground is “highly defined” in the manner Clarkson Stanfield had popularized, and painted in the clear hard colours that Cotman was trying to master in order to find a new market. As a picture it is a failure.69 Cotman clearly loved the life at sea, however humble his craft. On yet another voyage to London in 1838 he wrote: “It seems to me all my letters relate to my voyages up and down the Thames, breathing health and spirits. Today I took Alfred with me to Woolwich. It was such a glorious day, such clouds, such forms, such colouring. I was quite beside myself and everything appeared animated. This prosperous London and its environs to me is everything – especially the Thames. Steamers in shoals cutting their rapid flight among ships of all nations. In short, the whole day has been one of stupendous splendour. I think I never recollect such a day as it has been.” In 1834 Cotman’s financial position changed, along with his public recognition, when he was appointed the first drawing master of the new King’s College in London. Apparently Turner had strongly recommended him for the post. All the same, when Cotman’s A Dismasted Brig was

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sold at Christie’s in May 1836 in a lot with other small watercolours, it only reached seventeen shillings, and that only because he purchased it himself.70 Ruskin, who was a student at the College, never mentions Cotman. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of Cotman’s pupils at King’s, and remembered that “the seeds of madness lurked in this distinguished artist, although apart from a rather excitable or abrupt manner in ruling his bear garden, I never saw any symptoms of it.”71

 The last cohort of artists who came forward to paint the images by which the naval war against the French Republic and Empire is remembered were three who had seen service at sea during its last years: Huggins, Stanfield, and Chambers. These were to be the last of the artists of naval victory. In their lifetime Huggins and Stanfield were serious rivals to Turner, and all three were able to bring an intimate knowledge of ships and the sea to their work. But at the same time, the works of all three reflect the progress in the representation of atmospherics made by Turner. William John Huggins was a sailor who became an artist toward the end of the war when he left the sea. He was steward and assistant purser in the East India Company ship Perseverance, and it is known that he sailed in her to Bombay and Calcutta in December 1812, returning in August 1814. That may have been his last voyage. He set himself up as a marine painter in Leadenhall Street near the East India Company offices. Following the path of least resistance, he specialized in ship portraiture, although he also painted action pictures. An attractive impressionistic watercolour from 1815 or thereabouts is of An American Brig Chased by a British Frigate.72 Huggins’s work was popular with seamen, and his output prodigious. In 1817 he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy, and continued regularly to offer paintings until 1828, when he exhibited a picture of Indefatigable and Amazon attacking the Les Droits de l’Homme. Sometime before 1834 he was made marine painter to King William IV, who was “graciously pleased to command him to paint Three Pictures, commemorative of the great Naval Victory, obtained by Lord Nelson, at Trafalgar.” When two of the three pictures were completed, Huggins published a catalogue that contained a fold-out engraved plate of The Engagement and The Gale after the Action. A hand-written note adds

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that the proofs were selling at £2/2/– and prints at £1/5/–. John Cleveley’s A grand Marine Painting commemorating the interesting historical event of her Late Majesty Queen Charlotte Coming to England in 1761 was exhibited at the same time. The king preferred Huggins’s painting of the battle of Trafalgar to Turner’s canvasses.73 Ruskin gives an idea of the extent of Huggins’s popularity: Respecting this lower kind of ship-painting, it is always matter of wonder to me that it satisfies sailors. Some years ago I happened to stand longer than pleased my pensioner guide before Turner’s “Battle of Trafalgar,” at Greenwich Hospital; and my guide, supposing me to be detained by indignant wonder at seeing it in so good a place, assented to my supposed sentiments by muttering in a low voice: “Well, sir, it is a shame that that thing should be there. We ought to ‘a ‘ad a Uggins; that’s sartain.” I was not surprised that my sailor friend should be disgusted at seeing the “Victory” lifted nearly right out of the water, and all the sails of the fleet blowing about to that extent that the crews might as well have tried to reef as many thunder-clouds. But I was surprised at his perfect repose of respectful faith in “Uggins,” who appeared to me – unfortunate landsman as I was – to give no more idea of the look of a ship of the line going through the sea, than might be obtained from seeing one of the correct models at the top of the hall floated in a fishpond.74

Huggins’s ships do sometimes look rather like models, but they ride in seas that reflect Turner’s influence. King William was not altogether wrong. Huggins was capable of earning his living by painting, and he held the respect of the hanging committees of the Academy, and of the British Institution, where he exhibited paintings for twenty years from 1825. In 1836, 1837, and 1844 he returned to the Royal Academy. The first of Huggins’s royal commissions of the Battle of Trafalgar, The Victory Breaking the Line, is now at St James’s Palace, and the others are at Hampton Court.75 Edward Duncan engraved many of Huggins’s pictures for publication, including at least two Trafalgar subjects, and married his daughter Bertha, who was also a painter.76 The National Maritime Museum has one of her grey wash studies of a figurehead.77 Duncan began to paint marine subjects of his own in 1860.



William John Huggins, Battle of Trafalgar, oil, 24⬙ ⫻ 33⬙, © nmm bhc 0542.

The man who was to be the chief rival of Turner as a painter of marine subjects in the years following the defeat of Napoleon had served as an able seaman in the navy. In the year that war was declared by the French Republic, and that John Thomas Serres was appointed to his father’s post as Marine Painter to the King, Clarkson Stanfield had been born in Sunderland over a shop at the corner of Playhouse Lane and the High Street, right by the theatre where his father worked, and close to the wharfs.78 His father, James Field Stanfield, had been a Dublin man, and had trained for the Catholic priesthood. Apparently he became an excellent scholar, but decided instead to become a merchant sailor, and then to leave the sea and become an actor. A voyage in 1775 in a Liverpool slaver so revolted him that he became an abolitionist, and in 1788 dedicated his Observations on a Guinea Voyage to the anti-slavery lobbyist, the Reverend Thomas Clarkson. He and his wife, Mary Hood, also named the first of their five children after him.

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Apparently Clarkson’s was a happy childhood, and he was to remain close to his family. Some of the letters he was to receive from his family after he had, quite literally, embarked on his life, he preserved throughout it. They remain in the archives of the National Maritime Museum.79 His mother died in 1801. How important this bereavement was in shaping his character can only be a matter of speculation. Like Schetky he was to grow up an exceptionally considerate person, beloved of many, but in his later years, with the death of several of his own children, he was to become severe and seek shelter in religion. Within a few months of his mother’s death, his father married his young ward, Maria Kell, and Clarkson felt a responsibility to help support his father’s second family. When he was thirteen Stanfield was apprenticed to an Edinburgh heraldic painter who specialized in coach livery, but after two years he ran away because of the drunkenness of his master’s wife, and he persuaded his father to let him go to sea in a collier. His navy career began in 1812 when he was part of the crew of a brig Alexander working on the East Coast. When the Alexander was requisitioned as a military transport, her crew promptly deserted, but they were caught and pressed into the navy. Stanfield thus acquired the dubious distinction of having been the only noted marine painter known to have been impressed. When he was entered on the pay book of hms Namur on 31 July 1812, he gave his name as Roderick Bland, no doubt in hope that a nom de guerre would be useful should he be able to desert.80 In a draft letter Stanfield was to use the name Roderick, and apparently he was to remember that name in later life, but the clerk completing the pay book evidently heard the name Patrick, and recorded him as Patrick Bland, rated as an Able Seaman. When requested after Stanfield’s death for a statement of Roderick Bland’s naval service, the Deputy Commissioner of Navy Pay found only Patrick Bland, “who is stated to have been born in Sunderland (aged 19 in 1812) and to have served on board hms Namur between 30 July 1795 and 16 September 1815.”81 Surely the Deputy Commissioner must have scratched his head at the thought that Patrick Bland started collecting pay when he was two years old! Stanfield does not appear to have accepted a bounty for “volunteering.” Many impressed men were encouraged to do so, accepting the inevitable and pocketing the money, but it would have made the legal penalty for running much more severe. The Namur was a 74-gun guardship at Sheerness, and was commanded by Captain Charles John Austen, one of Jane Austen’s brothers and

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one of the relatively few graduates of the Naval Academy. Guardships were kept partly manned, as a quick reaction force, and as the nucleus of harbour defence. They would usually require a draft of men to enable them to go to sea. The Namur also provided accommodation for the port admiral, Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Williams. Austen was Williams’s flag captain, but he would have preferred to have been given command of a frigate in which there would have been some chance of action and perhaps of prize money.82 On or about 29 August 1813, Stanfield wrote his sister Mary an account of a visit paid to the Namur by the Duke of Clarence.83 Apparently Stanfield was first brought to Captain Austen’s notice when he wanted someone to paint a toy coach for his son. Later, in 1814, Stanfield’s talents as a scene painter were called for when the ship’s people were organizing amateur theatricals under the direction of elevenyear-old Douglas Jerrold, the future playwright, who had recently joined the Namur as midshipman. Following that success, Stanfield, or perhaps Able Seaman Bland would be better, was asked to paint the Admiral’s ballroom at Sheerness yard. He wrote to his father: “I was sent on shore to do a painting for the admiral’s ball room, which I did so much to the satisfaction of the Commissioner of the Sheerness Yard that he promised, when I finished, not only to get me my discharge from the Service, but give me a situation in the Dockyard. Encouraged by this I worked day and night at it for three weeks when, to my utter disappointment Commissioner Lob died, and with him all my hopes … At length by a close application to the painting, my health was so far reduced that I was found no more use to them therefore was sent to sea.”84 Whether Captain Austen was as heartless as he appeared cannot be confirmed. Jane Austen’s lyrical assertion in Persuasion came from her own conviction: “Louisa, by whom she found herself walking, burst forth into raptures of admiration and delight on the character of the navy – their friendliness, their brotherliness, their openness, their uprightness; protesting that she was convinced of sailors having more worth and warmth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved.”85 Stanfield certainly considered his situation as akin to slavery, and told his father that the only reason he did not desert was because he knew how important his pay was to the family. In order to discourage desertion, and also because of the navy’s perennial cash-flow problem, seamen’s pay was often years in arrears, and was forfeited if a

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seaman “ran.” But Captain Austen’s conduct is open to interpretation. It is possible that the pigments Stanfield used in painting the ballroom had affected his nervous system and that Austen thought he was doing Stanfield a favour by sending him away to sea. What was his sea service has not been discovered, but it was not to last long. His health became so bad that he was hospitalized, and on 9 December he was discharged as unfit, perhaps because of a fall that may have injured a leg.86 After his release from service, Stanfield visited his family in Edinburgh where they had moved in search of work. He was to have trouble with his leg for the rest of his life, but apparently the home visit brought some improvement in his general condition. He was well enough in March 1815 to ship out in the Warley East Indiaman for a voyage to Whampoa in China, from which he returned the following May. There survive pages from a journal Stanfield kept during this time, and a sketchbook dated 24 July 1815 is filled with pictures of China and the Philippines.87 Stanfield’s talents might never have been fully realized, had not his next ship, the Indiaman Hope, failed to sail for Madras in July 1816 as she had been scheduled to do. Out of a job, and out of money, he connected with his theatre and arts contacts in London. Huggins apparently was one of these. Despite his lack of apprenticeship, which led to his ostracism by his fellow workers, Stanfield’s friends evidently had enough influence to get work for him as a scene painter at the East London Theatre, Wellclose Square, off Cable Street close east of the Tower of London. He was contracted to work for three years, at £3 per week, but when the Royal Coburg Theatre opened at Lambeth in May 1818, he was chosen by Joseph Glossop, its director, as one of the company.88 There he worked under Serres, and evidently outshone him. Horace Foote, in his Companion to the Theatres, wrote in 1829 that “it was at this house that the fine taste of Stanfield was first introduced to the public.”89 His work at the Royal Coburg Theatre, perhaps because of the notorious speed with which he was able to execute his scenes, did not prevent him developing as an easel painter. William Leighton Leitch, a Scots watercolour painter whose father had been a sailor and who himself worked as a scene painter, later recalled that Stanfield had said to him that “the stage is an excellent school for learning art, provided we studied nature at the same time.”90 When his talent as a scene painter led Glossop to send him with William Barrymore, the actor, to Edinburgh

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in 1820, Stanfield consulted Alexander Nasmyth, who had given Schetky instruction, and he exhibited three pictures at the Edinburgh Institution of Fine Arts. In Lambeth, Stanfield counted among his friends Patrick Nasmyth, the son of the great man of Edinburgh, Thomas Barker a landscape painter, and the marine painters Charles Tomkins and (probably) George Chambers. William Etty ra, who was to champion Stanfield’s entry into the Royal Academy, was a neighbour. Stanfield exhibited his first painting there in 1820, and was one of the founding members of the Society of British Artists in 1823. George Cooke was another of Stanfield’s friends. Cooke’s son, Edward William, helped Stanfield by making drawings, and was to become a life-long friend. Stanfield doubtless met Cotman when he stayed with Cooke. In July 1818 Stanfield married Mary Hutchinson, a nineteen-yearold actress, and their first child, Clarkson William, was born the following year. Mary died two years later, shortly after the birth of a daughter, also Mary. It was probably to give Stanfield some support at home that his father and one or more of his step-sisters moved south to Lambeth. In May 1824 James Stanfield died, but by then Clarkson was engaged to Rebecca Adcock, another actress. A son, Henry, was born in 1826 and another, George, was born in 1828. When the Coburg Theatre collapsed, Stanfield was eagerly taken on at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, along with David Roberts, who was both a friend and a very talented rival. For an 1822 Drury Lane production, the Harlequin and the Flying Chest, Stanfield painted a 272foot-long view of Plymouth breakwater, which presumably was unrolled between giant spools as a backdrop.91 In a notable diorama for a pantomime in December 1825, he again exploited his naval experience to show a view of hms Victory. He also painted a naval panorama of Exmouth’s Destruction of Algiers, and another of The Battle of Navarino. If he had assisted Serres in the decoration of the Marine Saloon at the Coburg, his Algiers panorama would have been his second of that subject. Both Drury Lane panoramas were sent on tour. In February 1828 the British Institution awarded Stanfield £50 for an easel painting he had exhibited in the British Gallery.92 In 1830 he exhibited there a picture of St Michael’s Mount, and to promote his claim to an associate membership, he resigned from the Society of British Artists, which viewed itself as a rival organization. His bid was rejected. However, his Academy work brought him to the attention of King

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William IV. He was given a royal commission to paint a view of Portsmouth and another, which was to have been of Plymouth. When William and Queen Adelaide presided at the reopening on 1 August 1831 of London Bridge, which had been entirely reconstructed, the commission was changed to The Opening of the New London Bridge. To make his sketch, Stanfield and Edward William Cooke took a boat and moored it in the river southwest of the bridge. The Academy’s hand was forced by the royal commission. In 1832 Stanfield was elected with a very large majority. Cyrus Redding remarked in his recollections that Stanfield had “had the support of royalty to introduce him into the Academy, or with all his talents, he would hardly have found an entrance within the circuit of the forty wise men. It is the proud attribute of genius to soar above the letter which would enchain its spirit and confine it to the beaten track.”93 Lord Lansdowne and the Duchess of Sutherland both commissioned paintings, and in 1833 Stanfield was commissioned by the United Service Club to paint a very large canvas of the Battle of Trafalgar.94 His friends advised him that his continued work at the theatre was an impediment. Consequently, he resigned from the Drury Lane Theatre at Christmas 1834 and within six weeks he was elected a full member of the Royal Academy.

 Stanfield’s work was also influenced by one of the most talented of the marine artists of the period immediately after the end of the war, Richard Parkes Bonington. Bonington’s life was to be very short, but his influence was great. He did not even begin art classes until his family emigrated to France in 1817. He was then a pupil for a few months of François Louis Thomas Francia, who had lived and worked in London between 1790 and 1817 but had that year returned to his native Calais. Francia had been one of the group that met at Dr Monro’s and was a founding member of the “Brothers.” A lovely pencil and watercolour sketch he painted shortly after the end of the war on the lower Thames, of a nearly dismasted two-decker hulk sporting a laundry line, qualifies Francia, in a small way, as one of the band of brother naval artists.95 Unlike Prout’s later picture of a hulk, Francia’s does not suggest any fall from grace, but rather a cheerfully squalid use of an old ship.

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Bonington’s father stopped the lessons after a few months, but Richard ran away to Paris, where he met Delacroix and entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in April 1819. He returned to England in 1824, and in the four years left of his life he made a tremendous impression, working with the assured command of technique that irritated Constable. He never painted a picture in which the main subject was naval, but his marines set a new standard. A watercolour of his from 1827 of A Cutter and Other Shipping in a Breeze does show the Nore guardship, and is not unlike Turner’s treatment of Sheerness.96 Gerald Reitlinger commented in his The Economics of Taste, that “the death of Bonington in 1828 made Stanfield’s career, for if Bonington could no longer turn out Boningtons, Stanfield certainly could.”97

 It was at the same time that Stanfield was finally getting recognition from the Royal Academy that another seaman painter of the Napoleonic war, George Chambers, began to emerge from obscurity. We are indebted to a friend of his, John Watkins, for publishing an account of his life. Much of it was written before Chambers’s death, and corrected by Chambers himself. Watkins finished the biography in order to provide some financial support for Chambers’s family.98 Chambers had been born in one of the poorest parts of working class Whitby in 1803, the year that saw Constable’s voyage on the Coutts down the Thames. He was the second son of a seaman and a mother who kept lodgings, and he and his brother had to alternate going to school to save the expense of an additional penny a week. At the age of eight he had to leave school altogether and work on the coal sloops in the harbour holding bags open while they were filled, for which work he was paid two shilling a week. When he was ten he was sent to sea in the Humber Keel Experiment, which was owned by his uncle and was so small that it had a crew of one in addition to the owner. Little George was given one of his uncle’s boots as a sleeping berth. It is humbling to think that from this privation was to come such genius. Two years after first going to sea Chambers was apprenticed to Captain Storr on the cargo brig Equity. His life, always hard, became brutally so, especially because of his small stature, which made him vulnerable to bullying. When his warm clothing was stolen, his health was badly affected. Watkins wrote of that period: “Chambers was a willing work-

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man, of an active disposition, and quiet temper. He was very muscular, and could climb like a cat, by which means he saved himself from the blows of the seamen, when they were drunk, or disposed to treat him as a ship-dog. But nothing did he take delight in as in drawing – he recurred to it at every opportunity – seldom going on shore when in harbour, except on a Sunday to church, to see the pictures in it; and though his hours for repose at sea must have been very welcome to him, he devoted them when they happened in the day-time, to his favourite pursuit.”99 He had no opportunity to copy the works of earlier artists, and apparently first learned about representation from seeing Captain Storr drawing rough views of headlands as he passed them so that he could recognize them again should he pass in bad weather. It was also discovered that he had a talent for decorative painting. Storr was much taken by Chambers’s skill, and boasted of it to other captains. When the Equity was lying in St Petersburg, one of them, Captain Braithwaite of the Sovereign of Whitby, urged him to set young George free of his indentures. Storr was reluctant to, but: “The Equity being accidentally laid alongside of the Sovereign, in London Docks, and Captain B. having more wine on board than the customs, on clearing, would permit, he invited Captain S. to a drinking-bout. In the course of conversation over the bottle, the subject of Chambers’ discharge was renewed, and Braithwaite extracted an oath from Storr, that he would let him go.” This he finally did with the approval of the ship’s owners, and Chambers worked his way home. Back in Whitby, he took a job as a house and ship painter with a mistress who recognized his talent and allowed him time to work on his own. He was sought out by Greenland whalers to paint pictures of their ships from their sketches, and he borrowed art books to copy, including Pyne’s Etchings of Rustic Figures, which Ackermann published in 1815.100 Setting out in the middle of winter in a coble with some friends to sketch Whitby from the seaward, he had a near brush with death when a gale arose and drove them away from the land. They arrived home exhausted and with hands bleeding from the work at the oars, but also with a stock of sketches that Chambers worked up in the following years, and a patron in the person of the doctor who treated his hands and purchased some of his pictures. When he had completed his three-year contract with the house painter, and having little prospect of being able to develop his arts in Whitby, Chambers worked his passage back to London in 1825. He was then twenty-one years old, and the prospects were not good. A married sister was willing to rent him a room, but to pay for it he

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would have to return to house painting, or even go back to sea. From this fate he was to be rescued by an exceptional man. Christopher Crawford had been a comedian at Whitby and a doctor on a Greenland ship before deciding on a more settled life as the publican of the Waterman’s Arms in Wapping, where Whitby colliers berthed when in the London river. Watkins tells us that the patrons of the upstairs bar, known as the “House of Lords,” were Whitby shipowners, and that they wanted a picture of their town on the wall. They first approached Huggins, but he had not been to Whitby and needed travelling expenses as well as his commission. At that point one of the seamen in the public bar suggested Chambers, and Crawford went to seek him. Poor Chambers was at this period suffering under that depression of spirits which isolation and anxiety naturally occasion. Unfortunately, the zeal of his Whitby sister was not such as to encourage, but to depress him further. He was regarded by her in too humble a light. Crawford found him very shy and very diffident – he could not draw him into conversation, much less into companionship. Chambers did not pretend to be an artist – scarcely a common painter. In vain Crawford tried to lure him to his house, by telling him that he would find his old associates there. Crawford returned disappointed; but hearing our painter’s praises reiterated, he was induced to pay him another visit. Fortunately, he found Chambers finishing a little mill-board piece, which he had promised to do for a shipmate. Several others were placed around the room, and among them was one of a larger size, which Crawford immediately recognized as a portrait of the Equity, coming through the Downs, with a view of Ramsgate in the distance. Crawford took it up, and said – “Why, this is the brig you belonged to when you came to my house with Captain Storr!” Chambers replied – “Yes – I remember well coming to your house with a bundle of slops, which Captain Storr had been buying for me at a shop in Ratcliff Highway, where he had great difficulty in finding a suit small enough to fit me.”101

This opening helped to bring Chambers to the pub, and once there he was presented with a prepared canvas, which was the first he had ever had. Crawford proved to be a most devoted friend, and Chambers moved into the Waterman’s Arms.102 The picture of Whitby was painted, and before being hung in the “Lords,” was taken to the office used by the Chapman firm that owned many of the Whitby ships. This immediately produced a commission for another painting, and the word spread to other Whitby shipowners who wanted ship portraits. Chambers was

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adept at giving greater interest to them by adopting something other than the traditional broadside view, and by adding other shipping or coastal details. Early in 1827 he exhibited a painting for the first time at the British Institution, a View of Whitby.103 In 1828 he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, but he was only to show his works there three times. They were all seascapes, but none of them were of naval subjects. Chambers continued to observe the marine scene from the deck of ships. In 1827 he made a passage down-channel in the Runswick under the command of his brother-in-law. Payment was made to the owner, who was one of Crawford’s relations, by the promise of a ship portrait. “Chambers’ trip was extended beyond what he had thought of at first, and he not only sketched the remarkable headlands southward to the Isle of Wight; but he proceeded northward, sketching the coast-scenes and harbours, particularly the Humber and the Tyne views. He visited his old friends at Whitby, made merry with them for a while, and then returned to London, well stocked with marine sketches. ‘No more copying for me,’ said Chambers; ‘I can now paint from my own sketches.’”104 When he returned home he found that Crawford had enlarged his parlour. He set to work and painted a panorama of the coast northward from Whitby with portraits of various Whitby ships. This proved enormously popular with the clientele. Chambers had complained to Crawford about the lack of challenge to painting ship portraits, and this led in late 1827 or early 1828 to Crawford’s approaching the proprietor of the Colosseum in Regent’s Park, Mr Thomas Hornor, who had made two thousand sketches from the top of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral and had employed Edmund Thomas Parris to paint a panorama of London based on them. The Colosseum had been built as a focal point of the north end of Nash’s road connection from Carlton House to Regent’s Park, and was to be a pleasure palace for the highest society. The sixteen flat canvases suspended inside made a cylinder 134 feet in diameter. Parris and his crew had to work from scaffolding on long unstable poles, or from baskets suspended on cables. Chambers proved to be almost too good at the task, which required very careful perspective work to make the flat canvases look like a circular view. According to Watkins, his skill and speed of execution was very much resented by the other artists, who were hoping to make a career of the job.

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Rowland Stephenson, the financial backer of the scheme, disappeared in December 1828 with over £40,000 in government securities owned by St Bartholomew’s Hospital, leaving Hornor with debts he could not finance. He also fled, but his creditors kept Parris at work to complete the panorama.105 Soon after his arrival in London, Chambers, with all the precipitancy believed to be characteristic of a sailor, had fallen in love. [He] had not been in London two weeks when he was standing at his sister’s door, with his hands in his sailor’s jacket looking at a club-funeral, that was passing in procession. A girl happened at the same time to be going to the post with a letter for a sweetheart in the country. Chambers’ sister, who had lodged with her grandmother, saw her, and called her to them. Our hero was then very strongly feeling the want of that sympathy which men, isolated by their genius, can only find from the softer sex, where youth and nature prompted him to seek it. Something in the air and manner of Mary Ann, his sister’s young acquaintance, attracted his attention, and ultimately fixed it with a devotion second only to his love of the arts. Love delights in contrarieties. She was volatile – he was sedate. Wherever she went she was sure to meet him, until she began to think that fate had designed him for her, and she at length fell into the arms which had so long and so ardently been stretched to receive her. Chambers loved with the thoughtless generosity of a sailor. [He] had found one who had a liking for the arts and was never so proud of his pencil, and so pleased with its performances, as when he first shewed them to this sweetheart. She treated him rather flippantly in the street, where he appeared as a mere sailor-boy, but she found fault with herself for this, and her feelings grew more respectful towards him when she saw the works of his wonderful skill. The genius of the painter awed her; but the mildness of the man reassured her.106

Crawford strongly urged against the match, wanting instead that Chambers should tour the continent and study the paintings of the masters. But after two years he, who was providing Chambers with so much practical support, was at last induced to agree to the marriage. Chambers’s wooing was not so very unlike that of John Thomas Serres, and both had fallen for vivacious girls. A letter he was to write to Mary Ann in 1829 reveals something of both their characters. “My Dear, I hope you are well, and take care of yourself – if anything should

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happen that you are ill, write, and I will return immediately. Go by my advice – you will find it is genuine, and for your welfare and happiness, though you don’t think so. Do not be imposed upon, as you have been at all times, by your friends. My dear, you are now getting a family, which will be a blessing to you, if you prove constant and faithful, and you will be a lady if it lies in my exertions to make you so, and God spares my health – there is no fear but we may see many days of pleasure, which the study of my profession has so far prevented. Believe me it is a hard struggle to climb the hill to fame.”107 The resemblance to Olivia Serres was not very deep, but there is an indication in a letter Chambers wrote to Watkins on 6 April 1836 that life with Mary Ann had been difficult. “You little know the experience I have had. I beg of you to be cautious.” George and Mary Ann had moved to the Regent’s Park area to be closer to the panorama work. When that work came to an end, Chambers became a scene painter at the Royal Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road. This forced yet another move, back to Wapping Wall, where on 14 June 1829, their first child, George William Crawford, was born. Christopher Crawford stood as godfather when the baby was baptised in St Paul’s Church, Shadwell. Amongst Chambers’s efforts as a scene painter was “A Splendid Nautical Moving Diorama Accurately Describing Lord Howe’s Victory on the Glorious 1st of June,” which appeared in January 1831. No doubt he had seen Robert Dodd’s panoramic painting of the subject hanging in the dining room of the Half-Way House tavern, close to the theatre.

 In the conclusion of his biography of Chambers, Watkins summed up his friend’s art: “Our sailor-artist resembled our sailor-poet, Falconer, in having learnt his art where arts are more likely to be unlearnt. He knew every rope in a ship, and where it should be placed. In viewing one of his vessels we are irresistibly reminded of Byron’s description; – ‘She walks the waters like a thing of life.’ We almost expect to see her sail out of the canvas. ‘Her fixture has motion in’t.’ His vessels always sit well – in the water – not on it – they have hold of the water, and their sails seem swelled with actual wind. The waves appear to be really an undulating liquid – not glass, not ice, far less new-mown hay.”

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Thomas Whitcombe was one of the known influences on Chambers’s work. Chambers was attracted to one of Whitcombe’s paintings in a dealer’s shop and Crawford purchased it for him for the sum of ten guineas. Although Bonington died in 1828, and Chambers may never have met him, his work was known and Chambers’s quick learning curve allowed him to take what he needed from the technique of other artists. His watercolour picture, A Frigate Firing a Gun, which he painted about 1835, shows Bonington’s influence.108 When the contents of Chambers’s studio were auctioned after his death, Lot 145 was listed as Wreck of an Indiaman by William Daniell. The implication is that this was an original oil painting, and it may have been that from which was made the print of The Wreck of the Clarendon, West Indiaman, which was published in 1836.109 Critics tended to mention Callcott with Chambers, and Chambers named his third son, born in 1837, after him. John Lewis Roget, son of one of Chambers’s doctors and the historian of the Old WaterColour Society, says that a “Mr. Miles turned Chambers’s attention to a new style of art.” That may have been John Sell Cotman’s son Miles, who may well have shown Chambers his watercolours on one of his sailing visits with his father to London, or after John Sell’s appointment to King’s College in 1834.110 Edward Duncan was another of Chambers’s friends, but it is not known whether he met him before 1834 or 1835 when Chambers first visited Swansea. In his autobiography, the artist Thomas Sidney Cooper, who was to become one of Chambers’s friends, described him as “full of fun, [with] a fund of anecdotes, rendering him a most pleasant companion.” Cooper was also impressed by Chambers’s abilities: “His painting of rough water was truly excellent, and to all water he gave a liquid transparency that I have never seen equalled.”111 Another of Chambers’s friends was James Baker Pyne. Pyne had been born in Bristol in 1800 and his family had wanted him to be a lawyer. He had moved to London in 1835 and exhibited paintings at the British Institution, the Royal Academy, and the Society of British Artists, which elected him a member in 1842 and ultimately their vice-president. In an early essay for the Whitby Repository Watkins wrote: “The writer has beheld Mr. C. at work – work it could not be called! Taking a brush full of colour, he dashed it on the paper as if he merely meant to spoil it; and yet, such was his treatment of the materiel, this cloudy mass gradually assumed shape and character, and, like a scene growing

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out of chaos, or an embryo changing into the perfect object, it seemed to have a property in itself of gathering consistency, and in the end produced an effect quite melo-dramatic.”112 Watkins’s description gives a very attractive picture of a family man, who was an artist. After a visit to Chamber’s home in London, Watkins noted: He painted in his drawing-room; but excepting the picture on the easel, there were no marks of its being a painting-room. His colours and brushes were kept in a mahogany case, designed by himself and having the appearance of a piece of drawing-room furniture … He rose about eight, breakfasted, went into his painting-room, worked and received visitors while at work, dined late – for he wished to prolong his working hours until light failed – and when profitably engaged would disregard all calls to dinner. Tea followed shortly after dinner; and if he had had a successful day, but more commonly when unsuccessful, he would indulge himself in a visit to the theatre. His habits were very domestic. He loved to chat with his friends round his own fireside, smoking a cigar to a glass of white brandy … His method of painting a picture was first to chalk in the subject, then pencil it, washing out the chalk marks. He first rubbed in the sky, afterwards the more prominent parts of the picture, but not piece by piece – he generally had the whole of the picture equally advanced, for he could not finish bit by bit. His method when at work was to paint a few strokes, then retire to see how they looked, return and rub them out with a cloth, or put in others, retire again and so until he produced the effect which he saw in his “mind’s eye.” Sometimes he used his fingers and sometimes the stick end of his brush. His two boys drew in the same room while their father painted. His wife, like the dark-eyed Kate of Blake, cleaned his brushes for him and passed her opinion upon his performances.113

Chambers usually worked on several paintings at a time, and felt the pressure to get results quickly so that he could collect his fee. Whether working in oils or watercolour, his method depended on his capacity to apply colour, little in the way of line being used. His watercolour work was done with layers of wash and fine brush work, and only occasionally the use of a scraper to bring out a highlight. Changes in the intensity of the colour were used to convey perspective. The pressures on his little home may partly explain why Chambers liked to work outside, and perhaps why he took to working in more portable watercolour. Nevertheless, he and his friends would sometimes

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work together in the evening and whoever was the host would be given the sketch work of his guests. One of his sketching companions, James Chisholm Gooden-Chisholm, who compiled the Thames and Medway Admiralty Surveys in 1864, recalled their outings: “Chambers and I were much about together on the river, on several yachting excursions, in which he accompanied me. We had very rough weather, so I doubt that very much came of them to him; but when it was impossible to use colour, his scrap-book was always in his hand, and any accident in the arrangement of a vessel’s sails and notes of colour of clouds were at once recorded. Failing any particular object, he would be studying black and white in a little jet mirror, probably from his early days at Whitby.” At home in London, Chambers would often meet with his friends for evenings of sketching, after which they “would adjourn to his kitchen and sit over hunks of bread and cheese and glasses of beer till eleven o’clock. When no sketching night was on, I suspect, that a glass of gin and water, and a pipe, perhaps in a public house in the neighbourhood, sufficed him. He was a perfectly sober man, but this was the sort of life pursued by most of the artists, aye, and the rising ones, of the time.”114 Watkins adds that, for relaxation, he “did not read much, but was fond of music. He could himself play well upon the flute, with which he accompanied his wife upon the piano. The different instruments seemed to figure forth their different characters – the mellow breathings of the one formed a fine contrast with the quick jingling of the other.”

 Chambers had been able to continue work on his own paintings, despite the pace of work at the theatre. Among his pictures began to appear some naval subjects. He evidently was on the spot at Chatham on 22 September 1827 when the Royal George of 120 guns was launched, and made at least two pencil drawings of the scene.115 One day around 1830, Rear Admiral the Honourable Thomas Capel happened to see his paintings in the window of a picture framer. “The Admiral, struck with their nautical exactness, purchased them, and making enquiry who the painter was, and where he lived, he called upon Chambers, and gave him a commission.”116 He introduced his friend, Colonel Long, and two other senior officers, Rear Admiral Sir George Mundy and Rear Admiral Lord Mark Kerr. Long commissioned A Fresh Breeze, Portsmouth

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in the Distance, which was exhibited at the British Institution in 1830, and both Mundy and Kerr commissioned pictures.117 Admiral Kerr in particular became a strongly supportive patron, and introduced him not only to other senior naval officers, but eventually to King William IV and Queen Adelaide. “There are few things that give me greater pleasure [he wrote to Chambers] than bringing the talent which I think you possess into view. I therefore request you will never think of thanking me for any services which you may fancy I do you. The only thing I hope is, that you will never, for one moment, lose sight of endeavouring to improve yourself, and never ceasing to do so until all who shall see your pictures may acknowledge their excellence. With talent such as yours, you should never rest satisfied with mediocrity, but endeavour unceasingly not to be surpassed.”118 Not surprisingly, some of Chambers’s best painting was undertaken for Admiral Kerr. He was commissioned to paint a series of pictures of notable moments of the commission of Kerr’s first command, the Cormorant of 20 guns. These included a painting of her in a tide race off Ushant after a heavy squall had carried away the bowsprit, foremast, and the main and mizzen topmasts. A companion painting showed the Cormorant under jury rig talking to an American ship, and another pair of paintings showed the Cormorant in action on the French coast. Kerr provided a detailed written description of the scenes, and Chambers, even though his own sea experience had not been in the navy, provided complete satisfaction to his patron not only in the exactness of his detail but also in artistic terms. These pictures remain in the possession of Admiral Kerr’s descendants. Admiral Mundy commissioned a painting of his command, hms Hydra, capturing the small French frigate Furet on 26 February 1806, and another of Hydra in action at Bagur on the coast of Catalonia in August 1807. Again, these are magnificent works of art, but Admiral Munn was not entirely happy with the accuracy of the representation: I approve of your drawing of the ship, of the sea and of the land; they are, in my humble opinion, pretty and very spirited: but I must object to the handling of the sails. Why is the foretopsail not set? – no man of war loosens her foretopsail as a signal for sailing – unless she is in charge of a convoy and at anchor. The jib should be eased a third in on the jib boom – it will look more ship-shape in blowing weather. The mizen or spanker need not be loose, which

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will show an ensign at the mizen peak, which you should hoist, and blow upwards like your jack at the foretopmast head – these alterations be so good as to make, and then I will pronounce it perfect. Your Friend, G. Mundy

Again: There is one thing must be altered, which is the lighthouse, as it is remarked by officers conversant with that coast (the Spanish) that such buildings are not to be seen – it must be destroyed. A very good judge, who has been in the Mediterranean, also has remarked as the sole error, in his opinion, in the picture, that the sky is not sufficiently blue cast for a Mediterranean sky, and I rather lean to that opinion.

When commissioned to paint a copy for Admiral Kerr, Chambers left out the lighthouse, but he left it in when William IV commissioned one. Mundy was also unhappy with the representation of gun smoke. “The picture arrived quite safe, and it has been seen and admired by several persons who are pretty good judges. The only fault I think they find is with the smoke, and I am of the same opinion. The fact is you have not been in the way of witnessing that sort of thing, but on seeing it once you would directly observe what I mean. I should, therefore, advise your going to Portsmouth the first saluting day, and view it both close and distant, and I am quite confident you will see and correct the error immediately, and it will serve you ever after.”119 Although he argued the point with Mundy, Chambers did make more than one visit to the naval ports. One of Chambers’s friends, Paul Gauci, made a lithographic print from the Capture of the Fort and Vessels in the Harbour of Begu (Catalonia) by H.M. Ship Hydra, Captain G. Mundy.120 Watkins wrote that, the “baffling circumstances of his early life” had increased Chambers’s “natural humility and diffidence – still, he was not without a confidence in himself, and this could be aroused into indignant pride and scorn. He ever listened patiently to sensible objections, and paid great deference to just criticism; but ignorant and presumptuous fault-finding disgusted him; and humiliating treatment produced an effect contrary to that intended … Having painted a picture, it was not always he could procure his price; and those who paid him, sometimes thought themselves privileged to be displeased. He deemed himself ordained for a better life than this, and longed to leave it.”121

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Chambers’s and Stanfield’s official recognition occurred about the same date, but Chambers lost his chance at royal patronage and had to make all the distance on the strength of his painting skills. He had resigned his place at the Pavilion Theatre after the one hectic year of scene painting, being replaced by William Leighton Leitch. The invitation that Admiral Kerr obtained for him to show his work to the king and queen should have ensured his success in society. Kerr exhorted Chambers: “If ever you exerted yourself do so now.” He especially urged Chambers to bring a picture he had begun of the king’s opening of the New London Bridge. Hurriedly finishing the picture, Chambers sent it to the palace. The king purchased it, ordered a copy of the picture of the Hydra on the coast of Spain, and expressed the Queen’s desire for “two of the smallest size.” He also invited Chambers to visit Windsor to see his Canaletti, and to be told how he should alter the picture of the opening of the bridge. “P.S. – Mr. C. had better bring any sketches he may have, from which the Queen may choose her subjects.” Chambers was persuaded by friends that he ought to order court dress, but fortunately it was discovered that this would not be necessary. Chambers made his obeisance as well as he could, but the Royal William soon put him at ease by the familiarity of his address. “Well, Mr. Chambers,” said he – “how dy’e do? – I’ve been expecting you. Let me see what you have brought.” Chambers opened his portfolio of sketches, and turned them over to the King’s view. “Ah, very good, very good,” said William. “I’ll go and bring Adelaide – there is a good light here – she can see them here very well.” With that he walked away, and presently returned, leading the Queen, arm in arm. “This is Mr. Chambers,” said he – “he has brought his sketches for you to look at – I would like to see your choice.” Taking up a sketch of a stormscene, he said – “I would choose that!” The Queen replied – “I don’t like that – it is too terrible.” “Oh, ma’am,” he said, with a smile – “we sailors like such subjects best – eh, Mr. Chambers?”122

Chambers was invited to copy the royal Canaletti, which had he done would have given him an excellent opportunity to get to know the king better. But the offer was never taken up. By the time Chambers got back from Windsor on top of a coach in a heavy rain, he was coming down with a cold. This brought on a return of the rheumatismlike disease that had crippled him as a boy sailor, and put him in bed for six months. It is a fairly safe guess that the psychological stress of

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his meteoric progress contributed to this collapse, but the tragic progress of the condition later in the decade cannot be accounted for psychosomatically. Possibly he was another victim of toxic pigments. At the end of the six months he was able to resume work and send his commissions to Windsor. By then, however, society had lost interest. As before, he had the good fortune of making friends with the doctor who attended to him, Dr George Leith Roupell. Chambers’s second son was born on 16 June 1832 – William Henry Martin, named after the king, and possibly also after the painter John Martin.123 The next year he was persuaded to visit Whitby in the hope that it would improve his health, and it was then that he met John Watkins, who was so impressed that he began to collect the material that he first published as a “Memorial” in 1837, and then more formally after Chambers’s death. He went on sketching excursions with local painters, including Thomas Dove, whom he may have known since his days as a house painter. Mary Ann joined him for the latter part of his visit. On his return to London, Admiral Kerr introduced Chambers to the important Bond Street art dealers, James and William Carpenter, whose patronage, however, was altogether harder-edged than had been Crawford’s, or Kerr’s. In 1833 the critic in a short-lived arts magazine, Lo Studio, remarked that “The painter, Mr. G. Chambers, needs no better advocate than his own work,” and so it was to prove.124 The following year, to his understandable satisfaction, Chambers was elected an associate of the Old Water-Colour Society. This was particularly pleasing as there were a large number of candidates, Chambers’s diffidence had made him incapable of lobbying for the position, and his work with watercolour was of very recent date – and yet he was elected unanimously. In 1835 he was elected to full membership of the Old Water-Colour Society, but he was never acknowledged by the Royal Academy despite his royal patronage. He knew he should be aggressively establishing himself in the world of arts, but he was too diffident. Watkins recounts: “He loved peace, and once presented a snarling critic with a beautiful little picture, to silence the cur’s bark; who was scarcely satisfied because the donor had not given a frame with it.” When Chambers visited the Academy exhibition in 1835 with Watkins, who had come to London on a visit, Stanfield came up to him and invited him to visit him in his studio. “But,” said Watkins, “he never went; the artist might think it was indifference, but it was diffidence.” The

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two artists had so much in common, from their experience at sea, their work in the theatre, and their marine painting, but none of that could overcome Chambers’s shyness.

 Samuel Prout, although confined by his ill health to his native Plymouth, was not so reticent. In March 1838 he wrote to Stanfield to thank him for the loan of some sketches. “I fear there is some naughty covetous feeling in my heart which springs up at the parting with such treasures, but there is so much truth about them, & they are of so much value to an artist that the sin is almost excusable: however, I have not copied one of them, knowing that you will always be happy to allow me the same favour, when required.” In May he wrote: “There is no artist for whose talent I have such high admiration & permit me to add – whose friendship I so much value. Many artists have talent without the truth of nature, & the contrary, but truth is your foundation, that is the truth of character, & all besides is good sense & good taste. I often endeavour to recollect your canvas & paper, & feel very ambitious of the power to lay an embargo on all you produce, until I had ‘sucked them like an orange’ – as poor Bonnington used to say … Alas! Alas! I am out of the reach of works of art, & conversations on oil. I fancy my powers are fast asleep, & I want examples to open my eyes.” And a few days later he wrote to thank Stanfield for a book, which he said he valued so greatly he was going to stipulate in his will that it be kept in the family.125

 Stanfield’s election to the Royal Academy was not to be the end of his theatrical efforts because he soon returned to work as a consultant, and friend, of William Macready and especially of Charles Dickens, who was himself the son of a Navy Pay Office employee, and whose mother was the daughter of a naval lieutenant. He was to become Stanfield’s closest and lifelong friend, although twenty years younger. Stanfield assisted with Dickens’s theatricals, although he preferred to avoid acting roles, and he also provided illustrations for Dickens’s Christmas books. He caused Dickens some embarrassment by refusing payment for his illustrations for The Chimes in 1844. Stanfield also made illustrations for The Pirate and the Three Cutters and Poor Jack by another friend, Captain

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Marryat. He painted a marine frontispiece for Dickens’s American Notes and a picture of ss Britannia inexplicably flying an American flag, and he participated in picnics and expeditions. Dickens reciprocated his friendship, using such nicknames as “Old Salt,” “Old Tarpaulin,” and “the lad with the tarry legs.” One of the more famous of Stanny’s and Boz’s (Dickens’s) expeditions, with Daniel Maclise, ra, and John Forster, took place in 1842 when they toured Cornwall. The letter Dickens wrote to Stanfield in January 1853 may be taken as typical: Yoho, old salt! Neptun’ ahoy! You don’t forget, messmet, as you was to meet Dick Sparkler [i.e., Dickens] and Mark Porpuss [Mark Lemon] on the fok’sle of the good ship Owssel Words [i.e., the office of the journal Household Words], Wednesday next, half-past four? Not you; for when did Stanfell [sic] ever pass his word to go anywheers and not come? Well. Belay, my heart of oak, belay! Come alongside the Tavistock same day and hour, ’steed of Owssel Words. Hail your shipmets, and they’ll drop over the side and join you, like two new shillings a-droppin’ into the purser’s pocket. Damn all lubberly boys and swabs, and give me the lad with the tarry trousers, which shines to me like di’mings bright!126

In 1857, when Dickens dedicated Little Dorrit to “Clarkson Stanfield by His Attached Friend,” he wrote of “the pleasure it has been to me to put your name on the opening page, or to leave behind us both (as I hope its being there, may), a little record important that we loved one another.”127

 Although marine paintings and naval subjects formed a fairly small part of his work, Stanfield is especially noted for them. In 1834 he illustrated Leitch Ritchie’s Travelling Sketches on the Sea-Coast of France. His exhibition in 1836 of the United Service Club’s commission, The Battle of Trafalgar, was a major milestone in his career. In 1835–36 he published himself a volume of Coast Scenery, A Series of Views in the British Channel, which he dedicated to the king. The plate for Falmouth focused on a hulked ship of the line used as a receiving ship, with a steam tug nearby. Other hulks appeared as the main subject of plates of Portsmouth harbour and Plymouth. These choices of subject may have

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John Simpson, Clarkson Stanfield, oil, c. 1829, npg 2637.

been influenced by Edward Cooke’s inclusion of a picture of a prison ship in Portsmouth Harbour in his 1829 Fifty Years of Shipping and Craft, and Cooke also included a plate of a steam-powered bucket dredge. Cooke painted two very attractive easel pictures of Portsmouth Harbour – Rigging Hulk and Portsmouth Harbour – with the Victory, which are now exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum.128 Together, Cooke and Stanfield may in turn have influenced Turner’s selection of the theme for his Fighting Téméraire of 1839.129 Presumably it was Coast Scenery that Stanfield presented to Prout. Stanfield’s work was often criticized by his contemporaries, and by modern critics, as having been too influenced by his years as a scene painter. Working on sets for the theatre, he had learned the need for clarity of line at all costs. In consequence, he never created perspective

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by allowing distant images to disappear into the haze. Instead, he reduced distant images in size and contrast, but kept them clean. His foregrounds, as Ruskin commented, were also influenced by his experience with sets, where the conventions allowed for open spaces with little content. He complained: “Stanfield very rarely gets through an Academy picture without destroying much of its space, by too much determination of near form” (i.e., the foreground).130 It may also be thought that Stanfield had learned to compensate for and to exploit the brilliance of stage lighting, and did not altogether abandon the technique when painting canvasses. His paintings were always brilliant, and unlike most painters of the period, he did not apply a varnish to the fresh paint. In the twentieth century, sale prices for Stanfield paintings fell drastically. A modern critic, Andrew Wilton, in 1981 the Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale Center for British Art, wrote: “Stanfield could adequately describe the ‘littlenesses’ of nature – the shape of clouds and the colour of the sea. But he could not begin to depict with convincing accuracy the height and breadth and depth of the sky, or the incalculable movement of the ocean. He could delineate the achievements of men, but not impress us with their grandeur. Above all, though he could scatter groups of well-posed figures across his landscapes, he could not make them, as Turner did, the focus of his subject, the heroic protagonists of the eternal drama of life.”131 Wilton is a scholar of the Romantic Sublime, and his judgment is perhaps unjust. Ruskin was no less aware of the constraint that Stanfield’s style imposed on the imagination of the viewer, but despite his championing that of Turner, was ready to give Stanfield his due. In the same Michael Angelo Titmarsh letter in which Thackeray admitted that Turner’s pictures were more than they seemed at first sight, he went on to say: “Now Stanfield has no mysticism or oracularity about him. You can see what he means at once. His style is as simple and manly as a seaman’s song. One of the most dexterous, he is also one of the most careful of painters.”132 Ruskin was to write in Modern Painters, that Stanfield was the leader of the English Realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his characteristics is the look of common-sense and rationality which his compositions will always bear when opposed to any kind of affectation. He appears to think of no other artist. What he has learned, has been from his own acquaintance with and affection for the steep hills and the deep sea; and his modes of treatment are alike removed from sketchiness or incom-

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pletion, and from exaggeration or effort … This healthy and rational regard of things is incomparably preferable to the dramatic absurdities which weaker artists commit in matters marine; and from copper-coloured sunsets on green waves sixty feet high, with cauliflower breakers, and ninepin rocks; from drowning on planks, and starving on rafts, and lying naked on beaches, it is really refreshing to turn to a surge of Stanfield’s true salt, serviceable, unsentimental sea … The works of Stanfield evidently, and at all times, proceed from the hand of a man who has both thorough knowledge of his subject and thorough acquaintance with all the means and principles of art. We never criticise them, because we feel, the moment we look carefully at the drawing of any single wave, that the knowledge possessed by the master is much greater than our own of the work, and therefore believe that if anything offends us in any part of the work, it is nearly certain to be our fault, and not the painter’s. The local color of Stanfield’s sea is singularly true and powerful, and entirely independent of any tricks of chiaroscuro. He will carry a mighty wave up against the sky, and make its whole body dark and substantial against the distant light, using all the while nothing more than chaste and unexaggerated local color to gain the relief. His surface is at once lustrous, transparent, and accurate to a hairbreadth in every curve; and he is entirely independent of dark skies, deep blues, driving spray, or any other means of concealing want of form, or atoning for it. He fears no difficulty, desires no assistance, takes his sea in open daylight, under general sunshine, and paints the element in its pure color and complete forms.

Ruskin, however, did complain that Stanfield’s work was perhaps a little too concrete: “But we wish that he were less powerful, and more interesting … We should like him to be less clever, and more affecting – less wonderful, and more terrible; and as the very first step towards such an end, to learn how to conceal. We are, however, trenching upon matters with which we have at present nothing to do; our concern is now only with truth, and one work of Stanfield alone presents us with as much concentrated knowledge of sea and sky, as, diluted, would have lasted any one of the old masters his life.”133 He characterized Stanfield as a “definer.” “Though, like all moderns, he paints cloud and storm, he will generally paint all the masts and yards of a ship, rather than merely her black bows gloaming through the foam.”134 But he also pointed out that Stanfield shared with Turner an understanding of the need to simplify ships’ rigging.

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I do not know any work in which, on the whole, there is a more unaffected love of ships for their own sake, and a fresher feeling of sea breeze always blowing, than Stanfield’s “Coast Scenery.” Now, let the reader take up that book, and look through all the plates of it at the way in which the most important parts of a ship’s skeleton are drawn, those most wonderful junctions of mast with mast, corresponding to the knee or hip in the human frame, technically known as “Tops” … Take what scale you choose, of Stanfield’s or any other marine painter’s most elaborate painting … and the deficiency of detail will always be found equally great: I mean in the work of the higher artists, for there are of course many efforts at greater accuracy of delineation by those painters of ships who are to the higher marine painter what botanical draughtsmen are to the landscapist; but just as in the botanical engraving the spirit and life of the plant are always lost, so in the technical ship-painting the life of the ship is always lost, without, as far as I can see, attaining, even by this sacrifice, anything like completeness of mechanical delineation.135

The example of Stanfield’s work possessed by the British Museum’s Prints and Drawings Department, Frigate in a Storm, combines spontaneity and commanding control in an exceptional record of the sailing navy at sea.136 In betraying the “littleness” of human achievement in the face of natural forces, with a reassuring matter-of-fact representation that gives the viewer confidence that the shipwrights and sailors know what they are about, Stanfield may be thought to have reached a more existential sublime. Man is not master of his world, but he scorns to fear it.

 In 1835 Chambers painted one of his greatest naval pictures, The Britannia entering Portsmouth Harbour.137 A small canvas, 22½⬙ by 30½⬙, the picture is a peaceful early morning scene with the ships and buildings beautifully detailed. The whole is suffused with a golden light reminiscent of Claude Gellée, of Lorraine, giving it a dreamlike quality which might not be entirely consistent with nature. The Britannia, one of the very large first rates of 120 guns built following the end of the war, and launched in 1823, is ghosting up the harbour with her sails partially brailed up to spill the light wind. Her beauty is more important than her warlike strength. She was a sister ship to the Royal George, which Chambers had sketched at her launching in 1827. His sailor’s eye has observed the sharp detail of houses along the shore, and a distant view of another

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Clarkson Stanfield, Frigate in a Storm, bm 1900.8.24.536.

three decker. In the foreground a yawl is towing spars. The perspective used in the picture was typical of Chambers’s work, the natural point of view of an artist working from a small boat near the waterline. Perhaps because of his intimate experience with very small trading vessels, Chambers was comfortable with a view from the lower deck. There followed a commission from Edward Hawke Locker, the son of the William Locker who had employed Robert Cleveley as a clerk in the 1770s. The elder Locker had been Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital from 1793 until his death in 1800, and had recommended the establishment of the gallery of naval paintings in the Painted Room of the Hospital. This his son, as secretary of the Hospital and in 1829 one of its five civil commissioners, was able to establish with the help of Sir Charles Long, later Lord Farnborough, who was a director of the hospital, and the support of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Robert

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Smirke, and Sir Francis Chantrey, a sculptor. The collection was based on the gift from King George IV in 1824 of thirty-seven paintings from the Royal Collection, mostly portraits, to which he added in 1829 de Loutherbourgh’s Battle of the Glorious First of June and Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar.138 Locker sought to round out the collection, and Chambers was asked to make a copy of the painting Benjamin West had made in the late 1770s of The Destruction of the French Fleet in the Port of La Hogue.139 This large and active subject, again suffused with a golden light, was very well received and led to a more exciting commission to paint a picture of the Bombardment of Algiers. Chambers’s picture was larger than he was accustomed to undertaking, 69½⬙ by 99⬙, and the fee of £200 guineas his highest. There survive a number of graphite sketches of detail work of ships and hulks which he undertook, apparently at Portsmouth. They are less complete pictures than those made by de Loutherbourg but are much more exacting than any of Turner’s. Chambers made four studies in graphite, pen and ink, grey and brown wash, experimenting with different compositions. He also made an oil sketch for the painting which is in itself an exciting work, at least to modern eyes accustomed to impressionism. The oil sketch was probably made to satisfy the gentlemen who contributed to the cost of the picture.140 Locker was critical, and wrote to say so: Since you left your picture with us, I have frequently and carefully examined it, to ascertain why the general effect, at a distance, diminished the satisfaction I received when looking at it in detail when close. It certainly wants that broad and striking effect so necessary to a Gallery picture, and especially as it is placed near the Death of Nelson, which, as a night-scene, very successfully executed by Devis, tries it hard. There is too much light generally in your picture, giving it a grey tone, which contrasts ill with the picture by its side. The white smoke at each end of the picture disturbs the concentration of light; and the dark mass of the sea, which so well throws back the Queen Charlotte and the Explosion, thus becomes a black mass in the centre of the picture, and offends the eye when seen at a distance. The sails of the Albion and Minden are not sufficiently relieved from the dark cloud behind them; and the rigging of the Impregnable has too sketchy an appearance when united with the black clouds behind her. In making these free remarks on your picture, it is but right to inform you, that, having formed this opinion after repeated inspections, (for the defects

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George Chambers, Bombardment of Algiers, oil, 69½⬙ © nmm bhc 0617.

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were not apparent to me at first), I have since asked the opinion of Sir Jahleel Brenton (himself a very good amateur artist); and two other gentlemen also well acquainted with painting, have since examined the picture carefully, and, without telling them my opinion, they expressed nearly the same sentiments, while they cordially concurred in the general merit of the execution. You may probably think it worth your while to come and look at it before it is seen by other artists; as, if these objections are well founded, it is fair you should have an early opportunity of examining it for yourself, as your future success may be greatly concerned in the consideration. Believe me very sincerely yours.141

Sir Jahleel Brenton, if the pictures he made for the print dealers are anything to go by, was hardly a very reliable critic. Locker’s opinion of the picture sounds like that of a man who has been surprised by a new style, which he has not yet come to believe in. But there is also something in what he says. The striking clarity of the picture does tend to make the whole something less than is the sum of its parts. This is a direction which was in general being taken by British art at the time, with the exception of the increasingly isolated Turner.

George Chambers, The Britannia entering Portsmouth Harbour, oil, 22½⬙ ⫻ 30½⬙, © nmm bhc 3245.

Watkins was also critical of the depiction of gun-smoke in Chambers’s pictures: “He has fallen into the defect with regard to the colour and form of the smoke that was pointed out to him by Admiral Mundy. Gunpowder smoke is of a dead white colour, and bursts from the gun into a cloud at once – it is not poured from the cannon’s mouth. There is an inky or purply haze about this picture which detracts from its merits, but time may mellow this, and then it will be regarded as one of the best naval and historical pictures in that glorious gallery.”142 Perhaps time has been kindly, because the lighting effects do not seem inconsistent with the subject, and even show some resemblance to the ideas Turner was expressing. Chambers did not make any alteration to his picture, which now hangs prominently in a stairwell at the National Maritime Museum. Some at least of his contemporaries appreciated his work. When the picture was exhibited in the British Institution, the critic for the Literary Gazette commented in the issue of 4 March 1837: “Battles by water, as well by land, have undergone a great change in the manner of their representation since the times of Serres, Paton &c. They

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have now less of the geometrical, and more of the picturesque. As a work of art, this does great credit to the talents of Mr. Chambers. It reminds us of the destructive effects of the ‘Leviathans afloat,’ described by the poet as ‘like a hurricane eclipse of the sun.’ Perhaps there never was a warlike enterprise, the results of which were so gratifying to humanity as the bombardment of Algiers.”143 Watkins believed that Locker’s criticism prevented Chambers from receiving any further official commissions, but Locker himself commissioned a painting of Admiral Vernon’s attack on Puerto Bello on 21 November 1739. It is another lovely, golden lit painting in the scale that Chambers preferred, measuring only 26½⬙ by 40⬙. Retrospective battle pictures were far less difficult to execute satisfactorily when the ships themselves, and their ordnance, were so little changed over the course of a century, although Chambers did paint in an anachronistic union flag which included the Irish red saltire cross.144 Chambers undertook a number of studies for a painting of the battle of Trafalgar which have great freshness and vitality, and show that he had several very interesting compositions in mind.145 There is also a watercolour study, now in the Pannett Art Gallery in Whitby.146 There is no record of any commission for the subject, or subjects, for Chambers might well have intended a series of paintings of Trafalgar. He did complete two watercolours, The Victory breaking the Line, Battle of Trafalgar which was exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1837 and sold for £30 guineas, and The Situation of H.M.S. Victory, at the time when Lord Nelson was killed, Battle of Trafalgar, which he exhibited in 1838. Both pictures have disappeared. Watkins’s mention of a Trafalgar painting in a letter of 27 January 1836 suggests that Chambers was working on a major piece. But no finished painting even remotely resembling any of his studies of Trafalgar is known about today. Chambers did complete a painting of the Battle of Camperdown with dramatic sea and sky reminiscent of de Loutherbourg’s painting. The modern scholar Alan Russett believes that it was commissioned by Admiral Duncan’s family. The echo of de Loutherbourg may be no more than a reflection of both painters’ experience in scene painting.147 He also painted a striking picture of hms Terror iced in off Cape Comfort, in 1836. This picture, possibly Chambers’s last of a naval subject, was commissioned by Captain George Back, who had been beset while searching for the lost Franklin expedition. It may have been based on drawings made by William Henry Smyth, who was Back’s first lieutenant, but nothing could entirely compensate for the fact that Cham-

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bers had never seen arctic sea ice. It is now part of the collection of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

 In 1837 Chambers undertook several trips, including his first abroad as a painter. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he chose to go to the Netherlands. He was accompanied by several fellow artists, and returned with sketches for marine pictures. Gooden-Chisholm recalled: “Our life there was to be in a boat sketching all the morning and afternoon, and then at Amsterdam into the boat to sketch the great schuyts that were taking people away to the villages on the Zuyder Zee after their work of the day was over in the city.”148 Perhaps Chambers’s reasons for travel included fleeing a home made uncomfortable by his wife’s behaviour. Roget commented: “Unhappily the after life of George Chambers was much embittered by his wife’s frivolities.”149 It is always difficult to see anyone else’s marriage as it is from the inside. Mary Ann did not have the excitement of artistic creation which gave meaning to her husband’s life. On the 27 May she gave birth to her third son, named Edwin Calcot Finucane, but family life may not have been enough for her. The receding prospect of royal patronage such as Augustus Callcott enjoyed, and which had once seemed to be there for Chambers if only he would but grasp it, may have been hard for her. In October 1838 a group of Whitby residents petitioned Queen Victoria to appoint Chambers Marine Painter to Her Majesty, but nothing was to come of it. However it was, Mary Ann’s husband did not stay long at home after Edwin’s birth. He received permission to visit the Nore light vessel to make sketches, but instead worked from a small boat. Then in July he visited Whitby. On his return he moved his family again, back to the artistic community around Tottenham Court Road where patrons could find him, and where he and Mary Ann would be closer to friends and to the theatre. The death of his young son, and the birth of his only daughter, must have added to the domestic stress. The next year he travelled again, to Portsmouth, the west country and Wales, and he thought about moving his family to the seaside. Chambers’s affection for his wife continued to be expressed in letters home. In 1839 he visited Ramsgate to be near the sea, but now the disease that had dogged his life returned in force. His motor control began to desert him, so that his last pictures lack his full powers.

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He returned, and his kind friend Gauci who went to see him was so shocked at his altered appearance, which plainly indicated the hand of death, that he fainted. Chambers resorted to his old friend Crawford, his counsellor, and his banker. With tears in his eyes, he said, “I am afraid my serious indisposition will bring me and my family to live in a garret. All going out, and nothing coming in. I am almost reduced to poverty.” “‘Never mind,’ said Crawford, ‘make yourself comfortable on that head – it shall never be the case, as long as I can hold my head above water.” “I am advised to go up the Mediterranean,” said Chambers, “but should I die on the voyage, what will become of my wife and family?” “Do not give them a thought,” said Crawford, “leave all that to my management, only you make preparation for the voyage.” “But I have not the means,” said Chambers. “That’s my look out,” said Crawford, “only promise to go and I will arrange all for your passage.”150

Crawford in fact got Chambers a passage on a packet to Madeira. During the voyage he painted a lively view of his ship, the Dort, but he only stayed ashore ten days, and returned as he had come. “He ever felt uneasy when from home – like Sir Walter Scott, at Malta, he missed his own hearth, and yearned for his household gods.” He knew he was dying and did not wish to die among strangers. Within weeks of his return his health took a decided turn for the worst. He travelled down to Brighton with Mary Ann. “His wife, now his only companion in his last hours, nursed him with great diligence; rested not, to procure him rest; and endangered her own health to bring back his. She read to him to beguile his sickness; and, ever grateful to her for her attentions, and desirous to repay them more abundantly, he spoke of the rewards he would give her when well again.”151 He did not die in Brighton, but found the strength to return to London, and died there on 29 October 1840. In its obituary the Literary Gazette wrote: “Amongst the commissions which he felt most proud of receiving were those for Greenwich Hospital. Having been selected by Mr. Locker to paint for that national repository some of the battles of this country, he will there be handed down to posterity by the nation which will be proud of the young sailor artist.”152

 The loss to marine painting occasioned by Chambers’s death at such an early age, and when his capacity was still expanding, was very great. And of course he left Mary Ann and a young family with little resource.

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Stanfield and Turner both contributed to a fund that was raised to help his widow, and Stanfield “finished” Chambers’s incomplete painting of The Battle of Trafalgar.153 Stanfield had himself exhibited a Trafalgar painting in 1836, and there is a sketch for a painting of the battle in the Tate gallery attributed to Stanfield. Although a much smaller work than the painting supposedly by Chambers, the oil-on-board sketch is virtually a finished picture with only minor differences in composition.154 Stanfield had a habit of making several versions of his subjects. The light in the “Chambers” Trafalgar is consistent with that of his Algiers, but it would not have been difficult for Stanfield to have forged a “Chambers” effect. It seems probable that the picture sold for the benefit of Mary Ann and her children was in fact the work of Stanfield. It is possible that it had been painted for the use of William Miller, the Scottish engraver who prepared a plate of the Stanfield Trafalgar for publication by Ackermann’s print shop on 1 November 1839. This was five years after the death of Rudolph Ackerman senior. His eldest son, also Rudolph, carried on the family business.155 Once that job was completed, the painting would have been available. If that was indeed what happened, it was not admitted. Watkins wrote to thank Stanfield for his help: “When it was known at the auction that you had kindly lent your eminent pencil to complete it, the picture immediately rose to double the sum it was standing at, although it still was knocked down much below its value. Indeed, all the pictures were sacrificed to circumstances. Sir, Mrs. C. begs to thank you again and again, for none but you could have touched a picture of his without dishonouring it. And Mrs. C. feels additionally indebted to you for your great kindness in promising to correct a proof of the engraving of her late lamented husband’s picture of Liverpool, which Mr. Carter, the engraver, says will be ready in about five weeks.”156 Watkins dedicated his memorial biography of Chambers to Christopher Crawford who had “acted the part of a husband to his widow, and a father to his fatherless children.”

 By the middle of the nineteenth century the artists who had worked during the naval war were all dead, and even those who had begun their careers in the immediate aftermath of the war, while memories of it were still fresh, were reaching the end of their lives. In 1837 William Daniell had died at the age of sixty-eight, and William Anderson at the great

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age of ninety-one. Those who still survived, were inevitably affected by the deaths of others. Only Stanfield’s public persona was represented by his levity with Dickens and his circle of friends. The death of his son Henry in 1838 appears to have brought him to return to the Catholicism his father had abandoned. He was often at Ramsgate after 1841 with two fellow artists, Augustus Pugin whose father had collaborated with Rowlandson, a staunch Catholic, and William Etty who was an Anglo-Catholic. Pugin had close ties there with the Benedictine community and built his own house and church. On 3 October 1846 Stanfield was re-baptized in the Catholic faith, adding a saint’s name, Thomas, to Clarkson. He was to become a friend of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman. In 1848 he withdrew an offer to illustrate Dickens’s Pictures from Italy when he found it critical of the Catholic Church, although that did not have a lasting effect on their friendship. More serious was the impact of his increasing solemnity on his family, a solemnity that the deaths of two more of his children only increased. Stanfield was appointed by the Board of Greenwich Hospital in 1844 to act as curator of the Painted Room, to see to its restoration and the restoration of the naval paintings that were hung there. After Turner’s death in 1851 he was part of the committee that selected 102 of his watercolours for exhibition at Marlborough House in February 1857. But he did not die himself until 1867, and his capacity to express the navy of his youth continued to develop. In 1849 he painted a very attractive watercolour sketch of the breaking up of Nelson’s old capture, the San Joseph.157 And in 1853 he was commissioned by Sir Samuel Morton Peto mp to paint one of the most successful oil paintings of the age of sail, The Victory being towed into Gibraltar. At least two versions of this picture are in public galleries in London, at the Guildhall Gallery, and in the Victoria and Albert Museum.158 Cardinal Wiseman composed a verse inspired by the painting, and had it printed.159 A third version of Stanfield’s Victory, described as “style of” Clarkson Stanfield, was received by the National Maritime Museum in 1936 on loan from the Greenwich Naval Hospital and was catalogued as measuring 17½⬙ by 23⬙. It was then loaned in 1955 to furnish the Admiralty House in Malta, from which it was sent to the Rooke Officers Mess in Gibraltar, and finally returned to the museum in 2000. At that point it was discovered to be a much larger painting, measuring 48⬙ by 84⬙.160 It is probable that it is, in fact, a more recent

Clarkson Stanfield, The Victory being towed into Gilbraltor, oil on canvas, 70 ⫻ 45cm, Corporation of London, Guildhall Library, 10746.

Clarkson Stanfield, The Breaking Up of the San Joseph, 1849, watercolour, © nmm paf 6066.

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copy. Over the drawing room mantle in the “Convent,” the official residence of the governor of Gibraltar, hangs yet another version, and there are at least two other versions in private hands.161 Stanfield’s interpretation of the scene was melodramatic. When he exhibited the picture at the Royal Academy he attached a verse to it which he may have written himself: Battle stained and tempest tossed, a mighty ship comes on, No shout of triumph welcomes her for the glorious victory won, For she carries her dead admiral, killed in Trafalgar’s bay, And Nelson’s flag hangs droopingly on that triumphant day. Sail on, proud ship! thy battered hull proclaims thy place in war, A fitting bier for him who fell in the fight at Trafalgar.

He should have contented himself with simply showing the painting! The Athenaeum commented favourably in 1863 on “an added warmth of colour and less rigid handling” in the Victory towed … “How great is the improvement we need hardly say.”162 The Times remarked: “The looser and less decided handling, due to age, imparts to his later work a truth of atmospheric effect … which was wanting to the works of his prime.”163 In its review of a retrospective show in 1870 it even remarked favourably on the impact of his days in the theatre on this painting: “His long practice as a scene painter has no doubt much to do with the certainty of his hand, his thoroughness of realisation, his mastery of linear perspective and unfailing attention to balance and agreeableness of line and composition.”164 Lieutenant Nicolas rm, however, was critical of Stanfield’s representation of hms Victory. He viewed the picture at the Academy, and wrote to a friend who had been one of her officers: “The picture was all that you might expect from the talented artist, but I was not so well satisfied with his ships; nor would you have recognised your ‘Dear old ship’ in his representation of her. In fact he has made her a humping Spaniard – instead of one of the neatest of English three-deckers … The head of his main top-mast is gone and there is a mere flagstaff on the foremast, to which is set the topmast staysail.”165 The liberties Stanfield had taken were not unlike those for which Turner had been criticized. In 1855 Stanfield exhibited a classic warship picture of Men-of-War off Portsmouth with a boat and a buoy in the foreground.166 But his vision continued to darken. In 1856 he exhibited The Abandoned, a spare

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view of a derelict drifting wreck, commissioned by Sir Thomas Baring the banker and mp. The Athenaeum considered it “the best of our subject’s works.”167 The Times wrote: “The Abandoned is a vessel tossed on the waters, masts gone, hull deserted and forlorn, while the sky overhead is breaking, and a gleam of light descends only to reveal the utter desolation of the deserted ship. Here are few enough materials out of which to make a picture – a rolling sea, an abandoned hull tossed on it, and heavy clouds above; but out of these materials he has made a most powerful scene. The sea is very true – it is actually in motion; it makes one giddy to look at it … There is not a man living, save Stanfield, who can paint the sea in commotion.”168 Ruskin wrote, somewhat inconsistently it must be admitted: “Stanfield’s chief dignity is his being a painter less of shipping than of the seal of time or decay upon shipping … a wrecked ship, or a shattered boat, is a noble subject, while a ship in full sail or a perfect boat, is an ignoble one; … it is a nobler act in man to mediate upon Fate as it conquers his work, than upon that work itself.”169 The picture may well be taken as a personal statement by Stanfield, whose two eldest children had recently died. Alas, it has now disappeared, no doubt into some private collection. To Stanfield goes the distinction of painting the last naval picture by the band of artist brothers who had experienced the war against the French Republic and Empire. In 1863 he exhibited at the Royal Academy The Situation of His Majesty’s ship, The Defence, and her prize Il St. Ildefonso, on the morning following the Battle of Trafalgar. Cadiz and Rola in the distance, with many of the captured ships ashore on the coast between Cadiz and Cape Trafalgar.170 This was a very somber last work, but his subject retains more dignity than did the postwar pictures of hulks. The view closely resembles the written description of virtually the same scene which had been written by Lieutenant Nicolas, who survived it in hms Belleisle under jury rig and under tow by the frigate Naiad: The sea and wind had increased [on the 23rd] with every appearance of a heavy gale coming on. The ship laboured excessively, and in spite of the constant exertions of the frigate we drifted fast towards the shore. Several times the tow-rope parted, but notwithstanding the risk of approaching an ungovernable hulk in such a tremendous sea, a line was thrown and repeatedly the hawser was again hauled on board the frigate. The increasing storm had

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driven us so near the shore that it appeared almost beyond human hope that we should escape the frightful prospect before us … In the battle the chances were equal, and it was possible for many to escape; but shipwreck in such a hurricane was certain destruction to all, and the doubtful situation of the ship kept the mind in a perpetual state of terror. In this horrible suspense each stroke of the bell, as it proclaimed the hour, sounded as the knell of our approaching destiny, for none could expect to escape the impending danger … In a few minutes, “Land on the Lee bow! put the helm up!” resounded through the ship, and all was again bustle and confusion. When we got round, the breakers were distinctly seen about a mile to leeward, throwing the spray to such a terrific height that even in our security we could not behold them without shuddering.171

Again The Times was enthusiastic about Stanfield’s work: “All his pictures this year are marked by this quality, but most notably his Day after Trafalgar (423) [sic], with the dismasted and battered hull of the Ildefonso, weltering in the trough of the sea, the union-jack flying over the proud flag of Spain, and her captor, the Defence, in the distance, with her main-mast gone by the board, but still able to hold the sea.172

Po s t s c r i p t

In December 1864 George Jones wrote to Stanfield telling him of the death of David Roberts, the landscape painter: “Turner, Stanfield, and Roberts,” he wrote “have immortalized themselves in a similar line of art; and I most heartily hope that your health may improve to enable you to continue your successful career.”1 With Stanfield’s death three years later passed the last of the artists of naval victory who had actually witnessed the events of the naval war against the French Republic and Empire. The images of naval warfare left to posterity by de Loutherbourg, Brown, Copley, Pocock, Serres, Turner, Luny, Stanfield, Chambers, and so many others, are the principal icons of naval art during the age of sail. The artists of naval victory were a band of brothers, mostly selfemployed, struggling to meet the conflicting demands of their work, while supporting their families in a difficult world. The art of every epoch is unique to it, while sharing something from earlier times and passing on something to the later. The nexus during the period of the wars against the French Republic and Empire of history painting, battle painting, the pursuit of the sublime, and the discipline of the pictureque, with the technical focus of all naval painting, certainly presented unique challenges to the artists of the period. From the publication of his Fifty Plates of Shipping and Craft in 1829, Edward Cooke had taken up a leading position in the graphic representation of maritime affairs. He and his fellow marine artists of the Victorian era were witnesses to that new world – but they could not participate in recording the naval wars of the Georgian era. Art is always at least at one remove from events. The representations of the naval war by contemporaries, and even by those who witnessed the events, were

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undoubtedly influenced by the triumphalism of the public and the vanity of participants. But the triumph and vanity of participants constitute a valid subject for artistic expression, and must be accommodated by the art historian. The work of later artists, on the other hand, when they looked back at the events of the naval wars between 1793 and 1815, came increasingly to be influenced by nostalgia, and that retrospective emotion is “noise” that imposes anachronism on the imagery. The new era differed markedly from the Georgian because its artistic goals departed from those of history painting, and drifted away from pursuit of the sublime into the realms of story painting. Even Turner’s pioneering impressionism was abandoned by the English school of the later nineteenth century. The interest in marine subjects, on the other hand, in both the ships and the sea itself, continued, and naval officers continued to join professional painters in its expression. And just as the objectives of artists changed to meet new challenges, so the subject of their work began to change. As after all great wars, the urgent need was to bring home the ships and men, and reduce the parliamentary votes. The Georgian navy rapidly ceased to exist, leaving its bones in breaker’s yards, with very few exceptions. Turner and Thackeray were not alone in lamenting the change, but the Victorian fleet composed of ships built by different methods was no less interesting to the next generation of artists, and the new focus of this navy on Arctic exploration, and the suppression of the slave trade, generated its own heroics.

Appendix Pr i nt i ng T e c h n i que s

The principal engraving technique in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was mezzotint. This required hours of work texturing a copper plate with a toothed rocker, before the artist, having transferred a drawing onto the surface, could create the image by polishing the surface of the plate using a scraper for the grey areas and a burnisher to finish up the whites. Mezzotint technique had been introduced into England following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, by Prince Rupert the cavalry general and admiral who had experimented with art printing during his years of exile. Mezzotint was most valued for its ability to produce an effect that imitated the brushwork of a painter. The thousands of tiny burrs made by the rocker held the ink well and made possible large areas of dark tones. However, a copper mezzotint plate did not stand up to long print runs. Fifty pulls was considered good, although sometimes inferior second runs were made with repaired plates. In the nineteenth century mezzotint began to be made with steel plates, or even steel faced copper plates, but the effects produced were less subtle. For such purposes as printing charts in runs of a thousand pulls or more it was necessary to incise copper plates using a finely sharpened burin, or graver, or to etch the plate. The completion of a large engraved plate with a burin, sometimes referred to as drypoint, demanded hours of exacting labour for as much as six months. Etching demanded less strength, but posed other difficulties for the artist. Having first prepared a copper plate by coating it with a resist made of beeswax, asphaltum, and dammar or gum mastic, the artist would use a needle to scratch the image through to the surface of the plate, and then would immerse it in an acid bath. The work would be done in several stages, after each of

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which the plate would be washed, and the finer lines “stopped out” using a tinted varnish to protect them from the acid. Often the artist could not see the full effects of his graving until after the acid had done its work. A difficulty with drypoint and etching was that there was not enough burr in the areas intended for dark colours to hold the ink. Towards the end of the eighteenth century a technique known as aquatint was developed. Powdered resin was laid evenly over a previously engraved plate by shaking from a bag, and then heated just enough that it stuck to the plate. Then all the areas of the plate, except those requiring the additional aquatint texturing, were stopped with varnish, before the plate was emersed in an acid bath. John Clerk of Eldin, who was the first British civilian to make a serious study of naval tactics, was an amateur aquatinter. His An Essay on Naval Tactics, systematical and historical, with explanatory Plates. In Four Parts was published in 1782, and was widely read in the fleet, notably by admirals Rodney, St Vincent, and Nelson.1 Thomas and William Daniells’s print medium was aquatint, using up to three separate applications of resin of different density in order to scratch in by hand the coarser outlines, and finer details of his composition, which were then transferred to the copper plate by emersion in acid. Most prints were struck in only one colour (black), and colour was added by hand. In 1720, however, Jacob Christophe Le Blon obtained a patent in London for colour mezzotinting, using three plates for blue, yellow, and red, later adding a fourth for black.2 By the time of the French wars, colour engraving was used by the cartoonists James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, and George Cruikshank. Colour printing was also being employed for the finest works. William Daniell developed a new technique for engraving using at least two plates coloured with a warm grey and a pale sepia, and later, with a third plate, adding an impression with a pale blue-grey. The effect was to imitate the foundation washes, or “dead-colouring” that were used in eighteenth-century water colouring. After the impressions were made, the print was finished with watercolour detailing.3 Woodcut printing, and wood engraving using the end grain of boxwood for the printing block, was in the process of rediscovery at the same time. And in 1798 Alois Senefelder accidentally discovered the principles that enabled him over the next years to develop lithographic printing. The technique spread rapidly and was pioneered in England

Appendix

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by Philipp André in 1803, who persuaded many important artists, including West, to contribute plates to his Specimens of Polyautography. There continued to be resistance to what was thought of as a nasty, foreign and therefore inferior process, until Rudolf Ackermann in 1819 began to use it extensively for fine art reproduction. Even lithography, which Senefelder called “chemical printing,” was highly labour-intensive by twenty-first century standards. It was capable of producing very large press-runs, but the Admiralty preferred the traditional engraving techniques for chart production.4

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No t e s

abbreviations Graves, Royal Academy / Algernon Graves, Royal Academy of Arts, Dictionary of Contributers, 1769–1904. 8 volumes, 1905–06. bm British Museum Butlin and Joll / Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977. DNB / Dictionary of National Biography, Microscopic Edition. Erffa and Staley / Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985. Farington / Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, [Royal Library, Windsor], Complete Edition, 16 vols., Yale University Press, 1979. Haydon / Benjamin Robert Haydon, The Diary of … [Williard Bissell Pope, ed.], 5 vols., Harvard University Press, 1960. hms / His Majesty’s Ship nac / National Archives of Canada nal / National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum nam / National Army Museum, Chelsea. nas / National Archives of Scotland Naval Chronicle / Nicholas Tracy, (ed.), The Naval Chronicle, 5 vols., London: Chatham Publications, 1998–99 nga / National Gallery of Art ngc / National Gallery of Canada nmm / National Maritime Museum Olmsted / John Charles Olmsted [editor], Victorian Painting, Essays and Reviews, Vol. I 1832–1848, Vol. II 1849–1860, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1980–83. pro / Public Record Office, National Archives v&a / Victoria and Albert Museum wag / Walker Art Gallery

376

N o t e s t o p a g e s viii–9

preface 1 Review of Edward Forster’s “No 1 of the British Gallery of Engravings,” 31. c h a p t e r o n e , a r t i s t s a n d t h e n av y 1 Whitley, Artists and their Friends, 2: 224–5; Gerald Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste, 40; v&a Press Cuttings, 27 May 1799, nga pp 17g III, 795–6. 2 Farington, [Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, Complete Edition], 9 May 1799, 4: 1220–21. They are now hanging in Anglesea Abbey in the care of the National Trust. 3 Ian Jenkins, “Wreck of the Colossus” in Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan, Vases and Volcanoes, 58–9. 4 Oliver Warner, A Portrait of Lord Nelson, 360–4. 5 Richard Walker, The Nelson Portraits. 6 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 2: 118. 7 See François Bellec, “L’Exotisme des opérations navales dans la représentation des batailles.” 8 See Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768–1850. 9 C.S. Knighton and D.M. Loades, The Anthony Roll of Henry VIII’s Navy. 10 “Address to the Amateurs of Marine Drawing,” in John Thomas Serres, Liber Nauticus. 11 John Watkins, Life and Career of George Chambers, 26. See Russett, George Chambers, 41, 141. 12 Henry Angelo, Reminiscences, 1: 233–40. 13 Jane Austen, Persuasion, 169 (2: ch. 6). 14 Instructions for the better Ordering of the Fleet, Admiralty Library, c. 1688. 15 Quoted by Martin Hardie, in Water-colour Painting, 1: 227. See Joseph Burke, English Art 1714–1800, Oxford: Clarendon, 1976, 115. 16 Walter Hawken Tregellas, dnb, 468. An Exact Representation of the Launching of the Prince of Wales Man of War …, published by Barlow, 1 October 1794, bm 1868.8.22.5016. 17 Examples of such prints are: hms Nymph capturing the Cleopatra, engraved by C. Apostool after Lt. Thomas Yates, and published by Thomas Yates and Messrs Greenwoods, Leicester Square, 1 March 1794, bm 1870.5.14.2821–2; the capture of La Pique by hms Blanch, engraved by C. Rosenberg after Lt. Thomas Orde, and published by J. Bretherton, #134 New Bond Street, London, bm

N o t e s t o p a g e s 11–21

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32

33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

377

1917.12.8.4627; Admiral Sir J.B. Warren’s action 12 October 1798, engraved by James Fittler after Captain Mark Oates, published “for Mark Oates by J & J Boydell, 90 Cheapside and at the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall Mall, London,” bm 1917.12.8.4624–5. See Tracy, Naval Chronicle, 1: 12–14. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses, 103–5. John Williams, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians, 131. John Opie, Lectures, 7. Jack Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 68–9. Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, 2: 153–87. Second Edition, London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1759 Reprinted, New York: Garland Publishing. Inc., 1971. William Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, 1753, 14. Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768–1850, 149–50. Reverend William Gilpin, Observations … 1772, 1: 65. The British Magazine, May 1800, 1: 66. Quarterly Review, 3 (1810): 223. Alan Wace, The Marlborough Tapestries at Blenheim Palace, 60, et. seq., and Lalumia, Matthew Paul, Realism and Politics in Victorian Art of the Crimean War, 1–23. Naval Chronicle, 1: 208–11, 477–9, and 517–20. This style of hanging was recreated by the Courtauld in 2001 for its “Art on the Line” exhibition, in which several of the important pictures of the naval war artists were brought together. James Northcote (Ernest Fletcher, ed.), Conversations of James Northcote, 165. See also F. Gordon Roe, “Dictator of the Royal Academy,” Walker’s Quarterly, No. 5, October 1921; and Joseph Farington, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1819. Edward Dayes (E.W. Bragley ed.), The Works of the late Edward Dayes, 326–7. It was presented to the royal library at Windsor, and a complete edition was published by Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre in 1979. Farington, 24 December 1794 to 26 July 1795 passim and 23 October 1799, 1: 124, 139, 142, 215, 218, 220 and 4: 1290. Reynolds, Discourses, 9, 14, and 212. Haydon [Benjamin Robert Haydon, The Diary of …], 13 August 1813, 1: 320. John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1: 329. Robert Edmund Graves, “Robert Smirke,” dnb, 1939. Farington, 16 November 1806, 8:2908. See also 17 June 1813, 12: 4374. Farington, 2 and 11 December 1806, 8: 2916 and 2924.

378

N o t e s t o p a g e s 22–9

42 Ruskin, Preface to the second edition, Modern Painters, 1: xxiv. 43 Edward Edwards, Anecdotes of painters who have resided or been born in England, 250. See Isabel Combs Stuebe, The Life and Works of William Hodges, 74–8, 350–3; and Smith, European Vision, 57–8. 44 Farington, 3 and 7 February 1795, 1: 301–2. 45 John Lewis Roget, History of the Old Watercolour Society, 143–5. 46 See Margaret Greaves, Regency Patron, Sir George Beaumont. 47 Hardie, Water-Colour Painting, 2: 111–20. 48 John Pye, Patronage of British Art, 278–9; Gerald Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste, 26–38. 49 Catalogue of the Italian Pictures Lately Brought from Rome and Now Exhibited in the Great Room in Whitcomb Street, Leicester Square, March 1799. See Reitlinger, 39–47. 50 William Paulet Carey, Observations on the Primary Object of the British Institution, 21; Frank Herrmann, The English as Collectors 226–30. See Stephens, “The British Institution,” and British Institution Minutes, 26 January 1807, nal, rc 11: 179. 51 Guildhall Gallery, City of London. See Edwards, Anecdotes of Painters, 25. 52 Angelo, Reminiscences, 1: 314–15. 53 Angelo, Reminiscences, 2: 67–8. 54 William Paulet Carey, Some Memoirs of the Patronage and Progress of the Fine Arts in England and Ireland, 53. 55 Opie, Lectures, 19–20, and 94. 56 Farington, 22 April 1799, 1207, and Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 41–2. 57 Farington, 26 and 29 May 1803 and 12 December 1807, 4: 2038 and 2040–41 and 8: 3164. 58 William Daniel Jones, Records of Woolwich, 1, 33. Woolwich appointments in art during this period were: August 1768, Paul Sandby, Chief Drawing Master; September 1782, Robert Davey, 2nd Drawing Master; October 1793, Joseph Barny, 2nd Drawing Master (Davie having died); January 1797, Thomas Sandby, Chief Drawing Master (vice Paul Sandby); August 1806, Thomas Compton, Assistant Drawing Master for Ground; October 1806, Robert Shipster, Assistant Drawing Master for Ground; January 1811, Thomas Peckham Junior, 1st Drawing Master for Ground (vice his father, deceased); November 1828, Thales Fielding, Drawing Master for Landscapes (vice Sandby, superannuated). See also Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg, “The Shop”: The Story of the Royal Military Academy, 28, Course of Instruction 1772; and O.F.G. Hogg, “The Royal Military Academy in the 18th Century.” 59 Jones, Records of Woolwich, 45. 60 Papers relating to the Royal Naval Academy 1729–1816, Copy of

N o t e s t o p a g e s 30–8

61

62 63

64 65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

379

Letter from Admiralty Board to Navy Board, 16 March 1729; and “Articles and Orders …” n.d., Admiralty Library Manuscript Collection, ms 195. See also Royal [Naval] Academy, Portsmouth, “Qualifications Required for the Admission of Students into the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth,” 1802. Mark White his Manuscript, Navigation, Royal [Naval] Academy [Portsmouth], 1752, Admiralty Library, ms 336. Course of Learning Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, kept by Francis Phipps, 1774; similar owned by Thomas Gilbert Carter, 6 June 1790 to 11 October 1800; and similar, with frontispiece of the Academy, owned by George Tyrrell, dated 1807: Royal Naval Museum Manuscript Collection, ms Ac. 1984/288, Ac. 1955/33, and Ac. 2001/59. See also John Robertson, “Former Head-Master of the Royal Academy at Portsmouth,” The Elements of Navigation. Bosanquet, H.T.A., “The Maritime School at Chelsea,” The Mariner’s Mirror, 7 (No. 11) November 1921. Christopher Charles Lloyd, Naval Miscellany, 4 (Naval Records Society volume 63): 472. See F.B. Sullivan, “The Royal Academy at Portsmouth, 1729–1806,” Mariner’s Mirror, 63 (No. 4) November 1977: 311–26. bl, Add ms 36498 f. 353, “To King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” by Thomas Sandby (draft) n.d. Ruskin, Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings by the late J.M.W. Turner, 67. Ruskin, Notes, 67–9. John Christopher Sainty, Admiralty Officials, 77. In-Letter from John Cooke, 18 December 1807; Alexander Dalrymple to the Hon. W.W. Pole, Secretary to the Admiralty, 23 December 1807, pro adm 1/3522. Farington, 4 September 1813, 12: 4419. Farington, 31 August 1811 and 14 November 1812, 11: 3986 and 12: 4254. Farington, 1 June 1807, 4 and 6 January 1808 and 6 June 1809, 8: 3054, 9: 3189–90 and 3480. To Mrs Carey, 3 October 1821. Quoted by Lionel Henry Cust in dnb, 1508. Haydon, 1 March 1810, 1: 148. Henry Richard Tedder, “William Combe,” dnb 418–19. Farington, 4 June, 4 and 10 July 1813, 12: 4363, 4385 and 4390. Michael Thomas Scott Raimbach, ed., Memoirs and Recollections of the Late Abraham Raimbach, 21–2. Northcote, Conversations of James Northcote, 181–4. John Wilmerding, A History of American Marine Painting, 124. John and Josiah Boydell, An History of the River Thames, 2: 242.

380

N o t e s t o p a g e s 38–47

80 Richard Horwood, Plan of the Cities of London & Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and Parts adjoining Shewing every House, London, 1792–99. 81 George Rudé, Hanoverian London, 229–31. 82 Published by S.W. Fores, No. 50 Picadilly, corner of Sackville St. bm 1872.7.13.614. Another print showed the “Telegraph or Machine for conveying Intelligence with wonderful quickness as used by the French.” bm j.11.83. 83 Greenwich, Abstract of the Commission for Greenwich Hospital. Dated 10 September 1695. c h a p t e r t wo, t h e g l o r i o u s f i rs t o f j u n e 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

12 13

14 15 16

James Taylor, Marine Painting, Images of Sail, Sea and Shore, 85. Farington, 6 January 1799, 4: 1130. Angelo, Reminiscences, 1: 16. Dulwich Picture Gallery #66. 50⬙ x 40⬙, npg 2493. Engraved by R. Page and published 1 August 1814 by G. Jones, 164 x 116mm, nmm pad 3189. European Magazine, 1782, 182. William Henry Pyne in the Literary Gazette 31 March and 7 April 1821, 198–200, 216–8; later collected into Wine and Walnuts, 1823, 1: 281–304. Notice in The Times 5 March 1793, 3d. See Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London, 120–7. Pyne, Microcosm: or a Picturesque Delineation of the Arts, Agriculture, Manufactures, &c of Great Britain, London: S. Goswell, 1803. Pyne, Wine and Walnuts, 281–304. Philosophical Transactions 43: 12. See Bernard Smith, European Vision …, 8–10. John Wolcot, (pseud. Peter Pindar), Royal Acadamicians Ode VI, and Farewell Ode I, in The Works of Peter Pindar, Esq. with a Copious Index, London: Jones and Company, 1824. Historical Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Scene-Painting in England, Library of the Fine Arts, London: M. Arnold, 1831; 1: 327–9. A possible early example of a naval picture by de Loutherbourg: The British frigate “Quebec” under Captain George Farmer in Battle with the French frigate “Surveillante,” October 5, 1799, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, attributed to de Loutherbourg and tentatively dated 1780. 31⅛⬙ x 47½⬙, Glenbow lpj.62.87. Whitley, Artists and their Friends, 2: 354–5. Mary Pratt, A List of a few Cures, London: J.P. Cooke, 1789. Rt. Hon. B. Vernon Smith, Letters addressed to the Countess of Ossory from the Year 1769 to 1797 by Horace Walpole, Lord Orford, London: Richard Bentley, 1848, 2: 374.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 48–55

381

17 Whitley, 2: 355. 18 Dayes, The Works of the late Edward Dayes, 337–8. 19 Joseph Moser, Anecdotes of Richard Brothers in the Years 1791 and 1792 with some Thoughts upon Credulity, London: 1795, 17, 31; Lionel Henry Cust, in DNB 1245. See Richard Brothers, A Revealed Knowledge, 1795. Engraving “Richard Brothers, Prince of the Hebrews” by William Sharp, published by himself, 8 Charlotte St., Middlesex Hospital, London, 16 April 1795, bm 1982 v. 1544. 20 Farington, 10 April 1804, 6: 2295. 21 “The British School of Engraving, No. II, Earl Howe’s Victory over the French Fleet, June 1, 1794,” The British Magazine, May 1800, 1: 467–8. Farington reported that Smirke had heard a lower price of £700, Diary, III 857, and Thomas Holcroft, Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft, London: 1816, 3: 10–12, put it at £500 each. 22 Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray the Caricaturist, a Biography, London: Phaidon, 1965, 49. 23 Angelo, Reminiscences, 1: 382–3. 24 Holcroft, Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft, 3: 10–12. 25 The Grand Attack on Valenciennes under the Duke of York, 25 July 1793, engraved by W. Bromley. 26 Dorothy George, Catalogue of political and personal satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in The British Museum #8327; George, English Political Caricature, 5. 27 Farington, 1: 12; and Sven Bruntjen, John Boydell, Chapter 3. 28 Farington, Chatham Dockyard 54⬙ x 110⬙, and Deptford Dockyard 54.5⬙ x 77⬙, nmm bhc 1782 and 1874. 29 Farington, 1: 95–6, 197, 200, 213, 215, 218, 219, and 224. 30 George, Catalogue #8353; George, Caricature, 7. 31 Farington, 11 June 1794, 1: 199. 32 The Britannic Magazine, 6 (1798): 154. See Chris Ware in Duffy and Morriss, The Glorious First of June, 25–45. 33 Farington, 7 July 1794, 1: 211. 34 Farington, 18 July 1794, 1: 216–7. See also 65, 199, 30 May 1796, 2: 564. 35 Farington, 9 September 1798, 3: 1056–7. 36 Farington, 1 June 1817, 14: 5027–8. See also 18 August 1794, 1: 227. 37 bm, Loutherbourg 201: c 5 and c 7. 38 Richard Godfrey, James Gillray, The Art of Caricature. London: Tate Publishing, 2001. 39 Dayes, Works, 337. 40 Angelo, Reminiscences, 1: 265–6. 41 bm 1857.6.13.588, 600, 591, 606. bm Loutherbourg 201: c 5 41 and 51. Cf. Parker, Mariners Mirror, 3 (1913): 40–2, referenced to Commander Robinson, rn, in The British Fleet.

382

N o t e s t o p a g e s 58–69

42 Signed and dated 1795, nmm bhc 0470. A study for this picture (10.5⬙ x 14⬙) was sold at Sotheby’s on 29.10.1986. 43 Farington, 2: 294. 44 Published 1 January 1799. bm 1870.6.25.623. 45 Raimbach, Memoirs, 36. 46 The British Magazine, May 1800, 467–8. 47 The Times, 30 March 1795, 3d. 48 The Times, 1795: 2 April, 3d; 8 April, 3d; 14 April, 3d; 16 April, 3b; 21 April, 3c; 14 May, 3c; 8 June, 3d. 49 The Times, 29 July 1795, 3d. 50 William James, Naval History of Great Britain from the Declaration of war by France, in February 1793, to the Accession of George IV in January 1820. London: Harding, Lepard and Co, 1826., 4: 149–50. 51 Dayes, Works, 337. 52 Farington, 3 March 1795, 2: 312. 53 Farington, 31 July 1798, 3: 1041. 54 Farington, 20 October 1798, 3: 1073. 55 Farington, 3 May 1809, 9: 3445. 56 Farington, 10 April and 2 August 1809, 9: 3434 and 10: 3520. See also 9 May 1804, 6: 2317. 57 Farington, 16 October 1812, 12: 4219. 58 28¼⬙ x 40⬙, sold at Christies 30.11.1970. At the time of the 1817 exhibition in the British Institution of “Deceased British Artists,” a version of the painting was in the hands of a Mrs Pretheron. An Account of all the Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the British Institution from 1813 to 1823, belonging to the Nobility and Gentry of England, 273. 59 Farington, 24 January 1805, 7: 2502. 60 Reverend Mather Byles, 1771–74, University of King’s College, Halifax, N.S.; Mrs. Gawen Brown, ca. 1763, Kennedy Galleries, Inc., N.Y. City. 61 See Grose Evans, Benjamin West and the Taste of His Times, 100. 62 59½⬙ x 84⬙, signed, ngc 8007. Copies, not all by West, in Royal Ontario Museum 65⬙ x 96½⬙; William L. Clements Library 60⬙ x 96½⬙; National Trust-Isleworth 60⬙ x 85⬙; Royal Collecton 60⬙ x 96½⬙; Glenbow 50¼⬙ x 72⅛⬙, Private Col. 17⅜⬙ x 25⬙; unknown 17⬙ x 23½⬙; ngc sketch on paper 16⅞⬙ x 24⅛⬙. See Erffa and Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, nos. 93–100, and Tippett, 44. 63 Reynolds, Discourses, 138. 64 Ellis Waterhouse, Reynolds, London: Phaidon, 1973. Introduction. 65 2515 x 3658mm, Tate Britain, N00733; See Peter Paret, Imagined Battles, Reflection of War in European Art, 1997, 57–8. 66 Williams, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians, 136.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 69–77

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67 2 (1794): 350–1. Noticed in The Times 30 March 1795, 3d. 68 Sir William Henry Dillon, (Michael A. Lewis, ed.). A Narrative of My Professional Adventures (1790–1839), 1953, 1: 157–9. 69 Brown, Lord Howe on the Deck of the Queen Charlotte, 102⬙ x 144⬙, nmm bhc 2740. 70 Farington, 18 July 1794, 1: 216. 71 Brown, Captain Home Popham, Royal Naval Museum, Accession 1999/47. 72 Raimbach, Memoirs, 20. 73 127cm x 101.6cm. See Stephen Rigaud, Facts and Recollections of the XVIIIth Century in a Memoir of John Francis Rigaud, Esq. R.A, 1984, 25. 74 Farington, 22 February 1795, 2: 308. 75 pro adm 36/10674. 76 Bernard Smith, European Vision, 128 and 134. 77 Graves, Royal Academy, 2: 81–2. 78 Farington, 9 August and 1 October 1794, and 14 January 1796, 1: 225 and 246, 2: 471 and 476. 79 Sold at Sotheby’s in poor condition, 1981. See Pieter Van der Merwe and Roger Took, The Spectacular Career of Clarkson Stanfield, 1979, 148. 80 Cleveley prints published by A.C. de Poggi, 91 New Bond St., London, 17 August 1795 – Glorious First of June, 509 x 770mm, nmm pai 5711; Morning of the …, 583 x 763mm, nmm pai 6372; Evening of the Glorious First 551 x 770mm, nmm pah 7876; 505 x 787mm, pai 5710 and bm 1872.5.11.144. 81 A.C. de Poggi, Narrative of the Proceedings of H.M. Fleet under the Command of Earl Howe from the second of May to the second of June 1794 … Description of the two Prints from Pictures representing the engagment, publication dated February 1796 but includes material from 1797. See Farington, 14 January 1796, 2: 471; and Van der Marwe, 157. 82 British Institution Minutes, 8 May and 22 December 1806, nal, rc 2: 126 and 167. 83 Williams, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians, 109. 84 7⬙ x 9½,⬙ nmm bhc 0475. The sword is in the possession of Howe’s descendants, Duffy and Morriss, 166. 85 Angelo, Reminiscences, 1: 233–40. 86 Arthur M. Hind, A History of Engraving & Etching. 1963, 235. 87 Now in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 88 Thomas Rowlandson, Portsmouth Harbour, Lord Howe’s Victory, The French Prizes brought into the Harbour, signed, colour, 13½⬙ x 9⬙ v&a dg31 Dyce 790; and a more finished version misdated 1780, Dyce 791. Hardie, Water-Colour Painting in Britain, 1: 205,

384

89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97 98 99

100

101 102 103

104 105

106

N o t e s t o p a g e s 77–84

believes the misdating to have been Rowlandson’s own for purposes of sale. See Adolf Paul Oppé, Thomas Rowlandson, His Drawings and Water-colours, 1923. Claude Brighten, Biographical article on Nicholas Pocock, nmm files. Pocock, self-portrait, 196 x 140mm, nmm pad 3322. Logs of the Lloyd, and the Betsey, nmm log /m/54, 72, 3. Bristol Record Office, Pocock, Illustrated log book of voyages between Bristol and Dominica. James Hyndford Rawlins, Note on Pocock in the North Britain Advertiser and Ladies’ Journal of 25 June 1898. Mary Hartley to the Reverend William Gilpin, 14 February 1789, Bodleian, ms English Misc. D. 572. Quoted in Tom Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2: 297–9. Signed and dated 1784, 47.5⬙ x 85⬙, nmm bhc 0436. John Williams, (pseud Anthony Pasquin). A Liberal Critique of the Present Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1794, 20. Signed and dated 1790, 54½⬙ x 110⬙, nmm bhc 1950. Operations of the Grand Fleet under the command of Lord Howe from 28th of May to the Total Defeat of the French Fleet on the 1st June 1794, nmm jod/12. Published in Duffy and Morriss, 93-5 Nicholas Pocock. Ushant 1st June 1794. Lord Howe penetrating the line to windward on same tack, graphite, ca. 1794. 195 x 301mm, nmm pad 8695. Nine futher pictures pad 8696–704. Brunswick 55⬙ x 75⬙, signed and dated 1796, nmm bhc 0471; Defence 14⬙ x 20⬙, signed and dated 1811, bhc 0474. Letter attributed to Strachan, London, 1846, nmm agc/24(4). nmm agc/24/4 n.d., pen and ink sketch, 181 x 264mm, pad 8532; and see engraving by John Hall, To Rear Admiral Sir Richard Strachan …, published by John Fairburn, 482 x 755mm, pai 5439. See also Pocock’s working sketches nmm Boxes D 79–92, 184a–185, 1271: Sketch of the San Fiorenzo Graphite 246 x 310mm, nmm pad 8746; Trafalgar Pen and Ink 182 x 222mm, pad 8785; Sir John Ross … watercolour 283 x 356mm, paf 5886; Five sketches, Graphite and Grey Wash 265 x 402mm, paf 5901. Pocock to Richard Bright, 6 February 1804, nmm agc 22(4). The Bevan letter to Morgan is filed at the National Maritime Museum with Pocock’s journal, jod/12; see Duffy and Morriss, 51, 157–9. The Bevan and Kemble journals were published by W.G. Perrin in Naval Miscellany III. Also seperately published as: E Howe breaking the French Line of Battle on the 1st of June 1794, Nicholas Pocock, artist, Francis

N o t e s t o p a g e s 87–92

107 108 109 110 111 112

113 114 115 116

117 118

119

120

121 122 123 124

385

Chesham, engraver, published by Bunney & Co, 1 Mar 1799, aquatint & etching 132 x 222mm, nmm pai 3047. 23 May, Charles R Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 1896, 20. The Art-Journal, London, 1857, 9: 46–7. Altick, The Shows of London, 132. Robert Mitchell, Plans and Views, plate 14. Farington, 19 April 1794, 1: 180. This Position of the Ships, as Exhibited in the Panorama, Leicester Square, was correctly taken at one o’clock, P.M. on the First of June, 1794, bm 1983.0.242, and in the pro at adm 7/884. A list of subjects in the Barker Gallery is in The Art-Journal 1857, 9: 47. The Times, 29 June 1795, 1a. Sketchbook, nls 9651 f. 2v. The Times, 29 July 1795, 3d. Signed and dated 1795, also known as The Battle of the First of June, 1794, nmm bhc 0469. The National Maritime Museum is unable to exhibit it because of its size. Altick, The Shows of London, 134. Richard Livesay (with James Bowen), Mercator’s chart shewing the Track of Earl Howe’s Fleet in pursuit of the French National Fleet from the 19th of May … reached within random shot on the 1st of June 1794 (Plan and line of battle) Ushant, brown etching, 652 x 782mm, 1794, nmm pah 7861. Richard Livesay, A Splendid Record of British Bravery displayed in the Six French Ships of the line Captured the First of June 1794, as they appeared on their arrival in Portsmouth Harbour Plate III L’Achille, coloured aquatint by J. Wells, 618 x 756mm, published by Walker, 10 March 1796. nmm pai 6369. Richard Livesay, To the Hon William Cornwallis, ... on the 17th of June 1795 … the British & French fleets at the Commencement of the Firing on the Morning … aquatint and etching by Charles Rosenberg, 21 Aug 1796, 319 x 796mm. One of a set of three, others are pai6057–pai6058; Richard and John Livesay, To George Montagu, Esqr Admiral of the Blue and Naval Commander in Chief at Portsmouth. This Print representing the French Gun Vessels, Captured Jany 31 1804, by His Majesty’s Ships Tribune And Hydra … inscribed by Rd Livesay, aquatint by Joseph Constantine Stadler, 270 x 345mm, published 21 February 1804, nmm paf 4753. Freeman Marius O’Donoghue, dnb, 1227. Farington, 16 1794, 2: 214. Whitley, 2: 212. See also Robert Edmund Graves, “Robert Smirke,” dnb, 1939. Raimbach, Memoirs, 35.

386

N o t e s t o p a g e s 92–9

125 Williams/Pasquin, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians, 129–31. 126 Aquatint engraving by J. Hellyer, published by John Brydon, 27 October 1799, 480 x 705mm, nmm pah 7908 (coloured) and 7907. Thomas Sutherland later compressed the subject to make a smaller aquatint engraving for James Jenkins’s series of “Naval Achievements” published 1 January 1817, 220 x 291mm, pag 7154. 127 Farington, 22 July 1794, 2: 218. 128 Farington, 22 December 1796, 3: 725–6. 129 Farington, 23 December 1802, 5: 1951. c h a p t e r t h r e e , s t v i n c e n t a n d c a m p e r d ow n 1 Rigaud, Facts and Recollections, 97. 2 Farington, 2: 561. 3 v&a, William Anderson, Marine ink line and wash, pd 211 e1028–1920; e92–1923; e454–1924. 4 v&a, Anderson, W., 91 a 3 and a second book, 91 e 2. See Laird Clowes, the Mariner’s Mirror, 12 (1926): 226. 5 See Pieter van der Merwe in Duffy and Morris, The Glorious First, 137. 6 v&a pd 221 e1029–1928 and e1029a–1928. 7 Oil, 19⬙ x 24⬙, signed and dated 1793, nmm bhc 1805. 8 36⬙ x 50⬙ nmm bhc 0468, and 17½⬙ x 25½⬙, bhc 0467. The latter is listed as “style of” but both are signed and dated 1795. 9 Dayes, Works, 315. 10 Tobin’s log, 23 December 1791–2 August 1793, pro adm 55/95. Six of his images are preserved at the Mitchell Library, New South Wales. 11 George Tobin, No.1. Thetis on shore near Currituck Inlet, North Carolina Dec 23rd 1794 … Cleopatra at anchor near her. Thisbe and Lynx answering private signals; No 2. Dec 31st 1794. The Cleopatra towing the Thetis towards the Chesapeake. Lynx and Thisbe attending … A Virginian pilot boat the Sally of Norfolk in the foreground; No 3. January 2nd 1795. Thetis, Cleopatra and Thisbe at anchor in Lynhaven Bay at the mount of the Chesapeake; and No 4. Thetis Feby 1795 Repairing at Gosport in Virginia, all signed and dated 1795, watercolour, about 269 x 370mm, nmm pag 9750–53. 12 Muster Book of hms Thetis, pro adm 36/13180, and return of officer’s services, pro adm 9/2 238. 13 Farington, 20 August 1796, 2: 646. 14 Thomas Rowlandson, Disembarkation of the Royalists of Toulon at Southampton, water colour 9 3/16⬙ x 13 7/16⬙, dated 1794, v&a wd 72 b p113–1931.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 100–4

387

15 See Elevation and Plan of Martello Tower, Corsica, from original drawings taken on the spot in the possession of I. MacArthur, Esq., engraved by James Fittler, 370 x 290mm, n.d., nmm pai 4831. 16 Pocock, The Agamemnon engaging the Ça Ira, 13th March 1795, watercolour 1810, 174 x 250mm, nmm paf 5872. See Pocock to [? Clarke?], 9 July 1810, nmm agc 22. 17 Frederick Cruikshank, Portrait of John Adams alias John Wilkinson Petty Officer Aged 78 Boatswain’s Mate of the Agamemnon (as Greenwich Pensioner), watercolour, dated June 1840, 441mm (height) x 322mm, nmm pah 3992; and another of same date, 240mm (height) x 186mm, nmm paf 6223. 18 Thomas Allen, a Greenwich Pensioner, ca. 1832, oil, 12⬙ x 9⬙, nmm bhc 2510; Sir Alan Gardner Bart Admiral of the Blue & M.P. for the City of Westminster, engraving from a drawing by Theophilus Clarke, 19 December 1799, 342 x 282mm, nmm pag 6461. 19 Farington, 14 June 1796, 2: 580. 20 To Sir Edward Pellew Bart. this plate representing the distressful situation of the Dutton East Indiaman … Nicholas Pocock, artist, aquatint and etching by Robert Pollard , published by John Jeffryes 15 Sep 1796, 478 x 643mm, nmm pah 8439. 21 Signed and dated 1798, 54½⬙ x 75⬙, nmm bhc 1914. 22 Farington, 15 October 1798, 3: 1070. 23 Raimbach, Memoirs, 20. 24 Colonel Drinkwater Bethune, fsa, A Narrative of the Battle of St. Vincent …, 2nd ed. London, 1840. 25 “A Few Remarks Relative to Myself in the Captain, in which my Pendant was Flying on the most Glorious Valentine’s Day, 1797,” signed by Nelson, Ralph Willett Miller, and E. Barry; copy sent to hrh the Duke of Clarence. In Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Dispatches and Letters of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, London: 1844–46, 2: 340–3. 26 Jedediah Stephens Tucker, Memoirs of Admiral the Rt. Hon. the Earl of St. Vincent, London, 1844, 1: 262n. 27 “A Few Remarks Relative to Myself in the Captain, in which my Pendant was Flying on the most Glorious Valentine’s Day, 1797,” signed by Nelson, Ralph Willett Miller, and Edward Barry, Naval Chronicle 1: 186–7; and de Poggi, Narrative of the Proceedings … 28 Farington, 3 March 1797, 3: 784. 29 Bastia, 282 x 410mm nmm pah 2324; Nelson 362 x 539mm, nmm pag 8949. 30 Published 4 June 1798 by John and Josiah Boydell, No. 90 Cheapside and the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall Mall. bm 1872.6.8.175. Brenton’s summary of his naval service, pro adm 9/2: 132, shows: 1777 Volunteer Clerk in Tortoise; 1787 Able Seaman in Belleisle; October

388

31

32

33 34 35 36 37 38

39

40 41

42 43 44 45 46

N o t e s t o p a g e s 105–7

1789 Master’s Mate in Weazle; November 1789 Midshipman in Bellona; 22 November 1790 Lieutenant for rank; March 1791 Lieutenant in Assurance; August 1798 Commander in Speedy; April 1800 Post Captain for rank; 1 January 1801 Post Captain in Caesar; 17 March 1802 St. Dorotée; October 1802 Minerva (taken 3 July 1805); 14 February 1807 Spartan; March 1912 Stirling Castle; 1 January 1814 Commissioner of the Navy, Minorca; 26 August 1814, Cape of Good Hope. Caroline’s Pay Book, pro adm 35/316: 3; Captain’s Logs adm 51/1261 and 1381; and Port Mahon Hospital Records, adm 102/706 and 707. St. Vincent. Nelson boarding the San Nicolas 14th February 1797, 390 x 596mm; Earl St. Vincent leaving Lisbon in the Ville de Paris 31 March 1797, 469 x 684mm; Cadiz June 1797. The Inshore Blockading Squadron coming to an anchor, 377 x 613mm; and The Inshore Blockading Squadron under Nelson in the Theseus, 374 x 564mm, watercolours, nmm pah 9501–5. See file in the Whitt Library, Courtauld Gallery. Graves, Royal Academy, 1: 367. The Inshore Squadron at Cadiz, July 1797, oil, 25⬙ x 39,⬙ nmm bhc 0499. Wilmerding, American Marine Painting, 120. Watercolour, 411 x 605mm, dated 1801, nmm pah 9532. Steel engraving by J. Rogers after de Loutherbourg, 191 x 283mm, published by John and F. Tallis, nmm pag 7112; and etching by same, 189 x 210mm, published by John Tallis, pad 5570. H.M.S. Victory raking the Spanish at the battle of Cape St. Vincent, 14 February 1797, and The battle of Cape St. Vincent, both 42⬙ x 63⬙, nmm bhc 0485 and 0486. An aquatint and etching engraving by J.W. Edy of a Cleveley picture of the Gallant Action … off Cape St. Vincent, 443 x 690mm, was published by John Harris, 17 July 1797, nmm pah 7918. 46½⬙ x 122⬙, signed and dated 1843, v&a (Apsley House). See William Cosomo Monkhouse, dnb 25. 61⬙ x 137⬙, signed and dated 1845, nmm bhc 0488. At time of writing, Allen’s picture dominates the Nelson Gallery in the National Maritime Museum. 1 Culloden; 2 Blenheim; 3 Prince George; 12 Namur; 13 Captain. nmm mkh/102 bm 1875.6.12.221/227. Published by Vernon and Hood, 30 November 1805. bm e.e.5. 229. George P.B. Naish, Nelson’s Letters to His Wife and other Documents 1785–1831, 1958, 429. Whitley, 2: 212.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 109–15

389

47 Dayes, Works, 356. 48 Richard Westall, Surrender …, nmm bhc 2909, engraved by Golding, 365 x 300mm, published by J. Cadell and W. Davies, 15 November 1808, nmm paf 4324 (bm 1879.5.14.2181); Spanish Launch … nmm bhc 2908, engraved by Anker Smith, 485 x 358mm, published May 1809, nmm paf 4322, (bm 1870.5.14.2179); Wounded nmm bhc 0498, engraved by I. Neagle, 480x 355mm., published 1809, nmm paf 4320 (bm 1870.5.14.2180); American Letter of Marque , engraved by Abraham Raimbach, 442 x 382mm, published 4 Jun 1809, nmm paf 4326. All paintings signed and dated 1806, 34⬙ x 28⬙. Other sizes were also published, and other engravings made. 49 Naval Chronicle, 1: 125. 50 George, English Political Caricature, 35–8. 51 William James, Naval History, 2: 32. 52 Farington, 10 December 1797, 3: 938–9. 53 pro adm 1/5125. 54 Farington, 6 and 27 June 1797, 3: 851 and 859. 55 “Account of the Late Mutiny in the Fleet,” The European Magazine, 1797, 31: 427–30, and 32: 60–4, 135–9. 56 Parker the Delegate, Sketch’d by a Naval Officer, Coloured etching 270 x 186mm, published by W. Holland, June 1797. nmm pad 3033. 57 4.75⬙ x 3.25⬙. British Museum Catalogue of Portrait Prints. Raimbach, Memoirs, 36; Freeman Marius O’Donoghue, dnb, 1466. 58 No. 723 in catalogue, 36⬙ x 28⬙. The photograph is preserved in the National Portrait Gallery archive. The engraving by W. Bromley after Drummond of Richard Parker, sketched in Maidstone gaol with Parker’s permission, is quite a different picture and makes the subject appear more of a gentleman. Published 12 July 1797, bm 1851.3.8.525. 59 7031, 27 April 1807, 3c. 60 Graves, Royal Academy, 2: 373–7. 61 v&a, pd 221 d1027 and d1028–1887. 62 Holcroft, Memoirs, 3: 218–20. 63 Farington, 13, 15, 16 and 30 October, 10 and 21 December 1797, 3: 906, 907, 938–9 and 952. 64 Camperdown #1 (59⬙ x 84⬙), Tate Britain t01451; #2 (31⬙ x 47⬙) was sold by Sotheby’s 11.3.1987; #3 (29½⬙ x 38⬙), and a possible #4 (unsigned, 20½⬙ x 30⬙), nmm bhc 0504 and 0501. Copies of the Fittler prints are at nmm (605 x 885mm) pai 5726 and (592 x 787mm) 6216; and (index) 7804. J. Rogers engraved a version of de Loutherbourg’s painting, entitled Admiral Duncan’s Victory over the Dutch Fleet, 170 x 230mm, a copy of which is at nmm pad 5526. 65 170 x 230mm, nmm pad 5526.

390

N o t e s t o p a g e s 115–25

66 Farington, 3: 1073. 67 Williams, Memoirs of the Royal Academicians, 138. 68 Gules David Prown, John Singleton Copley in England, 1774–1815, 1966, 322–36; and Sven Bruntjen, John Boydell, A Study of Art Patronage, chapter 4. 69 71¾⬙ x 90½⬙, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 70 Prown, Copley in England, 275–85. 71 Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan of Camperdown (1731–1840) 127 x 101.5cm, snpg pg 2965 (studio copy pg 2970); and 76 x 63.5cm, pg 2969. Included in the 2001 Courtauld “Art on the Line” show. 72 A stipple engraving by William Ridley of Copley’s portrait was used as a plate in the 1800 edition of the Naval Chronicle, 4: Plate 38. 73 Farington, 22 January 1798, 3: 971. 74 Camperdown House, City of Dundee. 75 Camperdown, 287, 343. 76 #276, Pay Book, H.M.S. Kent 74 guns, pro adm 35/921. 77 View of the Quarter Deck and Poop of hms Venerable with Explanatory ms Letter from John Little, hms Kent, Sheerness, to Copley, March 5, 1799, 204 x 332mm, nmm paf 7977; Muster Books of Kent and Venerable, pro adm 36/11649 and /2415. Prone, Copley in England, 356. 78 Farington, 21 May 1799, 4: 1226. See also 22 January 1798, 3: 971. 79 The Times, 25 May 1799, 3b. 80 Corporation of London Record Office, Common Council Journal, 10 October 1778 and 7 February 1779, 78: 100–103v and 171. See John Heath, The Heath Family Engravers, 1: 18; Farington, 20 May 1811, 10: 3933; Bruntjen, Chapter 4. 81 Prown, Copley in England, 357–8. v&a, “Cuttings on Art” i 22, n.d. c. March–April 1799. 82 British Magazine, (July–Dec. 1800) 2 (no. 10): 334–35. De Loutherbourg’s Lord Howe’s Victory was sold to a Mr T. Vernon of Liverpool in 1799, See Van der Merwe in Duffy and Morriss, 147. 83 Farington, 17 and 27 December 1797, 1 and 3 January 1798,3: 948, 955, 960–63; Whitley 2: 219–20. See parliamentary report in the Morning Herald, 1 January 1798. 84 Carey, Observations on the Primary Object of the British Institution, 21. 85 Copley to Caleb Whitefoord, February 10, 1802, bl, Add. Mss. 36,594 fol. 61; Martha Babcock Amory, The Domestic and Artistic Life of J. S. Copley, 1882, 95, Mrs Copley to [Mrs Gardiner Greene?] 1802.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 125–31

391

86 Raimbach, Memoirs, 14 and 36; and Farington, 20 May 1811, 10: 3933. 87 Battle of Camperdown, grey wash 178 x 255mm, signed, nmm paf 5875; Flag Table, nmm pad 8872–73. 88 The Battle of Camperdown, 11 October 1797, 35⬙ x 53⬙, bhc 0505. The engraving by T. Hellyer, published by John Brydon, 27 October 1799, 502 x 757mm, is of a different picture. nmm pah 7907. 89 Engraved by Thomas Sutherland, hand-coloured, published 1 January 1817, 220 x 291mm, nmm pag 7154; pad 5527. 90 To the King this Engraving and Historical Representation of Lord Viscount Duncan’s Victory …, drawn, engraved and published Daniel Orme on 20 August 1800, 489 x 580mm, nmm pai 5727. 91 Lord Viscount Duncan, 1731–1804, engraving by Charles Turner, published 1 March 1798, 185 x 134mm, nmm pad 3079. See Dorinda Evans, Mather Brown Early American Artist in England, 1982, 122–9. 92 Alfred Whitman, Ninteenth Century Mezzotinters, Charles Turner, 1907, 1. 93 Published by Edward Orme, 21 November 1797, nmm pad 3447. 94 161 x 255mm, nmm pad 5532. 95 bm 1917.12.8.4650. 96 Robert Dodd, Action off Camperdown. Monarch, Jupiter, Venerable, Hercules, Camperdown 11 Oct 1797, 135 x 226mm, published by Bunney and Gold, 1 September 1800, nmm pad 5529. 97 Dorothy George, Catalogue #9034; Caricature, 30–1. 98 Engraved by George Noble, and published by R. Bowyer and John Edwards, 11 October 1798. bm 1873.8.9.595. chapter four, the nile, copenhagen, and minor engagements to the eve of trafalgar 1 2 3 4 5

Dorothy George, Catalogue #9241. Dorothy George, Caricature, 38–43. Farington, 3: 1080. Holcroft, Memoirs, 3: 43. Benjamin Robert Haydon, The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1786–1846, 1926, 30. 6 Engraved by Thomas Hellyer, published by J. Brydon, Charing Cross, on 4 June 1800. bm 1917.12.8.4648–9. See pro adm 35/99 and adm 36/13756 #159. Weir entered Audacious’s books 11 December 1795, but appeared 1 August 1796. His commission dated from 4 May 1795.

392

7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15

16 17

18 19 20

21

22

N o t e s t o p a g e s 132–5

Caroline’s Captain’s Log, pro adm 51/1261. Battle of the Nile, 1st August 1798, 371 x 542mm, nmm pah 9506. 20⬙ x 28⬙ and 24¼⬙ x 29¼⬙. pro adm 51/1381. Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts: 0089 H.M.S. Flora and Caroline Reconnoitering Santa Cruz, Watercolour 15½⬙ x 23¼⬙, signed: T. Buttersworth, [17]98. pro adm 51/1381, 23 October to 1 November 1798. Original grey wash drawing by T. Buttersworth, signed, n.d., 471 x 685mm, nmm pah 9509. nmm note: “Probably Vice-Admiral Lord Keith off Cadiz in 1799 where he was left in command of the blockade by St. Vincent.” 22⬙ x 34⬙. Original watercolour, signed, T. Buttersworth, ’99, 403 x 619mm, nmm pah 9510. See Argo’s captain’s log, pro adm 51/1295. Oil 28⬙ x 40⬙, signed and dated 1808, nmm bhc 0513; graphite sketches, (1) View looking down at Aboukir Bay with the French fleet at anchor, 174 x 246mm, (2) Aboukir fort in the foreground, 169 x 244mm, (3) Stern view of the anchored French fleet, with the British ships coming in to attack 258 x 337mm, (4) Panoramic view 237 x 300mm, pad 8736–7, 8739–43. Graphite 151 x 246mm, nmm pad 8765 and, watercolour 265 x 406mm, signed and dated 1802?, paf 5879. Mistitled, “The ‘Agamemnon’ Disabled and in Tow by the ‘Alexander’ (Capt. Ball) 22 May 1798,” watercolour 175 x 251mm, nmm paf 5876. Engraved representation of the medal for the Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, March 1799, 121 x 205mm, nmm pad 3960. Farington, 11 October 1798, 3: 3: 1067, 1082. The Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798, beginning of the Action, and … end of the Action, both 48⬙ x 72⬙, the latter signed and dated 1799, nmm bhc 0515–16, and The Battle of the Nile, 35⬙ x 49½⬙ signed and dated 1798, bhc 0517. Commemoration of the Four Great Naval Victories … 1 … Victory of June 1st MDCCXCIV (1794) (Proof). John Landseer with Francesco Bartolozz, Thomas Ryder and James Stow, engravers ((part 2) James Parker and Worthington engravers, (part 3) John Smart, artist, George Noble and James Parker engravers), 1802 801 x 426mm, nmm pai 4985–88. Engraving and etching,Victors of the Nile (with 15 cameo portraits of naval officers) (proof, card sheet). by Robert Smirke, artist, John Landseer with William Bromley and Lenney, engravers, published by Robert Bowyer, 1803, 696 x 450mm, pah 5669. 118⬙ x 76⬙, Livingston House. See Smith, European Vision, 108–9.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 135–9

393

23 (Four views) of the Memorable Victory of the Nile, Gained in August 1798 over the French by the British Fleet in Aboukir Bay. (1) The British Fleet on the Evening of the 1st of August led by Goliath, (2) South West View, at 10 o’Clock on the Night of the 1st of August... when L’ Orient blew up … (3) South West View, on the 2nd August, at the time Le Génereux, Le Guillaume Tell, La Justue and La Diane were escaping pursued by … the aquatint and etching, Francis Chesham, artist, William Ellis (view 4 with William Anderson), engraver, published by Alexander Riley, November 1799, 330 x 440mm, 223 x 357mm, 328 x 432mm, 354 x 453mm nmm pag 8961–71 (other copies); 266 x 370mm, nmm pai 5376. Also, Battle of the Nile, coloured aquatint, 189 x 371mm, paf 4700. 24 Anderson sketchbook, bl Add ms 41644. Another, Add ms 41646, includes studies for harbour scenes and history paintings, especially “The Taking of the Modest and Two Pirates in the Mole of Genoa by H.M. Ships Bedford and Speed.” 25 Anderson, Battle of the Nile, signed and dated 1801, 30¾⬙ x 51¼⬙, sold at Sotheby’s 18 November 1987. Prints published 1 December 1800, nmm pag 8968–71. 26 The Art-Journal, London, 1857, 9: 47. 27 Etching with text. 440 x 330mm, nmm pag 8937. 28 Quoted in Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 41, 70. 29 R.A. Exhibit 1799 (#275); Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 70. 30 R.A. Exhibit 1800 (#638); The British Magazine, May 1800, 466. 31 Altick, The Shows of London, 126. 32 “Polite Arts – Panorama,” May 24, 1799. 33 Barker Notebook, nls ms 9647, 64, 69, and 72. 34 Barker’s “Memoranda,” in “The Panorama: with Memoirs of its inventor, Robert Barker, and his son, the late Henry Aston Barker,” The Art-Journal 1857, 9: 47. See also The Gentleman’s Magazine 1856; Chamber’s Journal 8: 1860; and Harrison, Robert, Dictionary of National Biography sv. Henry Aston Barker. 35 Naval Chronicle, 1: 290–2. 36 Barker Notebook, nls ms 9649 ff. 37 Copley to Alderman Boydell, 25 January 1799, Corporation of London Record Office, Common Council Journal 78: 171. 38 The Battle of the Nile, 59⬙ x 84⬙, Tate t01452, a smaller 27½⬙ x 35⬙ was sold at Christie’s 9.11.1974. 39 Copies of the prints are at nmm, engraving and etching by James Fittler, To the Right Honble Lord Viscount Nelson This Plate representing the Battle of the Nile … Fought Augt 1 1798, 608 x 812mm, pai 6217 and (605 x 709mm) 5735; and J. Rogers, The Battle of the Nile, August 1 1798, 135 x 159mm, pai 3133. David Cordingly, Marine Painting in England 1700–1900, 1973, 114.

394

N o t e s t o p a g e s 139–46

40 Letter of December 11, 1799. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Bayles Papers, 1753–1783. 41 nal, British Institution Minutes 1, 22 June 1824 and 8 June 1825, rc 15 (Mss), ff. 14, 23, 33. 42 Henry Tijou to Sir John Leicester, 22 December 1824; Douglas Hall, “The Tabley House Papers.” 1962), 38: 109–10. See William Paulet Carey, Some Memoirs, 123. 43 Brown, The battle of the Nile, destruction of L’Orient, 1 August 1798, 39½⬙ x 48⬙ nmm bhc 0510. 44 56⬙ x 66⬙. 45 The Examiner, 7 May 1825, 298. 46 Farington, 14 May 1808, 9: 3276. 47 Arnald, The battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798, 73⬙ x 106⬙, nmm bhc 0509. 48 Minutes, 11 May 1826, nal, rc 15 f. 42. 49 George, Catalogue #9278; Caricature, 42. 50 The British Fleet Passing the Sound, 28 March 1801, and View of the battle of Copenhagen, 2 April 1801, nmm pah 4028, 4029. 51 British Fleet … Entering the Sound and Passing the Castle and Fortress of Cronenburgh on the 28th March 1801, engraved by Bloch; … Glorious Victory obtained on the Second of April, 1801, by a Division of His Majesty’s Baltic Fleet under the Command of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson …, engraved by J.C. Stadler; both “Drawn by M. Pocock from a sketch taken on the spot by Robinson Kittoe Esq. late Secretary to Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Graves, K.B.,” nmm pai 6218 and 5753. 52 Watercolours, 365 x 519mm approx., nmm pah 5246–7; print based on 5247 engraved by Robert Pollard and aquatinted by J. Wells, To the Right Honourable Earl St. Vincent, K.B. &c, this print representing the Destruction of …, published by William Jeffreys, 1 October 1801, 409 x 591mm, nmm pai 5736. 53 The Battle of Copenhagen, 2 April 1801, 47⬙ x 72⬙, nmm bhc 0525, and 28⬙ x 40⬙, signed and dated 1806, bhc 0529. A steel engraving of the latter was made by James Fittler, and published 15 November 1808 by Thomas Cadell and William Davies, 273x313mm, nmm pad 5662. 54 Robert Dodd, Forcing the passage of the Sound, 30 March 1801, 24⬙ x 36⬙, nmm bhc 0522. 55 The Battle of Copenhagen, fought on the 2nd April 1801 under the Command of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker …, Lt. William Ramage, artist, after Thomas Whitcombe, engraved by J. Wells and Francis Chesham, and published by B.B. Evans, 22 April 1802, brown aquatint and etching, 500 x 740mm. 56 pro adm 9/3: 850.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 146–50

395

57 Wood engraving by George Thompson, An Exact Representation of the Battle of Copenhagen fought April 2nd 1801. By Admiral Sir Hyde Parker Admiral Lord Nelson and Rear Admiral Graves, over the Danish Fleet … (with key), 691 x 484mm. Published 19 May 1801, nmm pai 5395–6. 58 Both in private hands, watercolour 24⬙ x 16½⬙; oil 24⬙ x 36⬙. Whitt Library files. 59 Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 73. 60 Captain William Bligh and Thomas Dighton, lithograph, Lord Nelson’s attack on the Danish Line and City of Copenhagen April 2nd, 1801 From a Drawing made on the spot by Captain William Bligh of H.M. Ship Glatton. For Brenton’s Naval History, printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, and published by Brenton, 224 x 668mm, nmm pai 5386. 61 The Battle of Copenhagen, 2 April 1801, oil on canvas, 47⬙ x 72⬙ nmm bhc 0525. 62 His Majesty’s Sloop of War Wolverine of 12 guns and 63 men. Attacking and defeating two French Luggers, engraved by F. Warburton after a picture by Guido Anderson, and published by William Anderson, 315 x 400mm, nmm pag 8996; Hand-coloured aquatint and etching, The Wolverene sloop of war of 12 guns, Commanded by Captain Lewis Mortlock … the gun carriages are fitted upon an inclined plane and worked by grooves in the Deck …, painted and published by William Anderson, engraved by Charles Rosenberg, 345 x 435mm, nmm pag 8997. 63 Watercolour, Action between Leander and French two-decker Genereux, 424 x 269mm, nmm paf 5593. 64 pro adm 35/274 and 14355. A William Anderson passed for lieutenant in 1805, but he had not served in Bellona. adm 107/33: 119–21; and adm 6/103: 8. 65 Ozanne, Pierre, The Battle of Algeciras, 12 July 1801, 2ème position de fin de combat du Vau. français le Formidable … contre les Vaux. anglais le Caesar, le Venerable et le Superbe et la fregate la Tamis …, pen and grey wash, 240 x 406mm, signed, nmm pag 9645. 66 Engraved by Hubert and Stadler, and published by E. Harding, 1 January 1802, 98 Pall Mall, bm 1917.12.8.4589–91; see also Naval Chronicle, 2: 218–33. Whitcombe and Samuel Owen also made pictures of the subject. Whitcombe, Battle off Cabareta Point – July 12th 1801, aquatint engraved by Thomas Sutherland and published 1 March 1816; Owen, Position of the English and Spanish & French Squadrons before the action on the 12th July 1801, aquatint engraved by Wells and published by Bunney and Gold, 1 September 1801; nmm pad 5643–4. 67 Woolford to [10th Earl of Dalhousie] c. 1860, “Woolford’s Account

396

68

69

70

71 72 73

74

75 76 77

N o t e s t o p a g e s 150–2

of His Service in the Army, 1797 to 1860,” University of New Brunswick Archive, Loyalist Collection, Saunders Papers (mic lfr s22j6p3 Reel 4 “Military Affairs”). Woolford wrote that he was “now approaching [his] 79th birthday,” but his grave stone in the Old Burial Ground, Fredericton, reads: “In memory of J.E. Woolford, Esq., Late Barrack Master, Fredericton, Died 12th January, 1866 – Aged 88. In memory of Margaret Wife of J.E. Woolford.” Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, Oxford, 1957, 107–8; [Queen Victoria’s Journal, 26 December 1833, Royal Archives, Windsor]. See Marie Elwood, “John Elliott Woolford, Draughtsman to His Excellency the 9th Earl of Dalhousie 1816–21”; and ms in the Nova Scotia Museum. The information came from an interview with a Mr Henry Woolford, November 1989. wo 149/1. Woolford’s name does not appear in the possibly incomplete “List of Cadets at the Academy in August 1790 and until September 1793 – Woolwich,” nor in a separate hand list of the 1793 intake. Unfortunately there are no records for the period 1794 to 1800. Monthly pay list of the Second Regiment of Foot from 25/12/97 to 24/01/98, wo 12/2022. Woolford was “drafted, not joined.” See also regimental diary of the 2nd of Foot, nam, arc 6807–33,. Ramsay, Map of Egypt, 1800, 43 x 55cm, and Porto e Fortessa de Malta (Map) 37.8 x 41.2cm, ngc 29213.16 and 1. “Woolford’s Account …,” Woolford to [10th Earl of Dalhousie]. Woolford, Landing at Aboukir, 26.8 x 84.2cm. ngc 29213.17; Bay of Marmorice 25.8 x 37.5cm. ngc 29213.12; Fleet Leaving Marmorice 35.4 x 37.6cm. ngc 29213.15; Quaranteen Island, Minorca 28.9 x 64.2cm. ngc 29213.61; Gibraltar, Standing into the Bay from the West 40.5 x 63.8cm. ngc 29213.70 (133). Most of the Dalhousie collection was sold off in the 1970s (Elwood ms). There are collections of his pictures at Dalhousie University, Acadia University, in the New Brunswick, the York Sunbury, and the Royal Ontario museums, and the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture. See National Gallery of Canada, Visions of the Nile [exhibition records]: Woolford and the British campaign in Egypt, 1800–1801, 1994. gros 685/03 0016, Canongate parish registry, Proclamation of Banns 20 October 1804–6 December, Edinburgh. Margaret was daughter of William Fullerton, deceased. Witness to the Banns was Thomas Kigan. wo 12/2026. Post Office Annual Directory, Edinburgh and Leith, 1805–1815; Stuart Harris, Place Names of Edinburgh, 1996, 336. Brown ms, nls ms 2863 ff. 34–5 and 39v. See also mss 2864, 2866–7 and 8026. Iain Brown, New Dictionary of National Biography, sv. John Brown.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 152–9

397

78 This view of La Valletta, taken from the Marsa Battery during the Siege in 1800 …, Francis Chesham, engraver, drawn and published by Major Jason Weir, 25 January 1803, hand-coloured aquatint with etching, 384 x 512mm, nmm pag 9002. 79 Engraved by Luigi Schiavonetti and published by Anthony Cardon in 1804. The engraving is at nmm pai 6417, with a photograph of a key to the persons depicted at pai 7782. 80 Farington, 7 November 1803, 4: 2158. 81 Naval Chronicle, 1: 243–4. 82 The Cutting out of the French Corvette La Chevrette from the Bay of Camaret, on the Night of July 21, 1805, by a detachment of the British boats belonging to the Squadron commanded by the Honourable Admiral Cornwallis, Graves, Royal Academy, 2: 299–302, location unknown. 83 The sketch, 387 x 557mm, is at nmm pah 8407. The prints by Fittler, To the Right Honble the Lords Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord High Admiral … The cutting out of the Corvette La Chevrette from the Bay of Camaret on the night of July 21. 1801 …, 502 x 605mm, and The cutting out of the Corvette La Chevrette from the Bay of Camaret on the night of July 21st 1801 …, 508 x 633mm, were published by himself, 1 May 1824, pai 6122 and 6123; also bm 1878.1.12.112. Another much smaller version of the same picture was engraved by J. Rogers and published by F. Tallis n.d., pad 4092 and 5649. 84 Etching, coloured, 380 x 495mm, 16 March 1802. nmm pag 8678. 85 bl Egerton ms 1614 ff. 51–2 (bound folder of Letters to Emma and wrongly dated 1801). See Colin White, Note: “The Nelson Letters Project,” The Mariner’s Mirror, 87 (No. 4, Nov. 2001): 477. 86 Raimbach, Memoirs, 37–69. 87 Farington, 5: 1809–1917. 88 Farington, 24 September and 7 October 1802, 5: 1875 and 1905. 89 Alfred Whitman, Charles Turner, 7 and No. 794. 90 Farington, 17 July 1803, 6: 2082–3. 91 Farington, 5 August 1803, 6: 2095; and William Sandby, History, 1: 269. 92 Reverend Leveson Vernon Harcourt, ed., The Diaries and Correspondence of the Right Hon. George Rose, 2: 63–4. 93 Musters of Volunteer Companies, wo 40/21; Home Office Establishment Book, ho 51/109, entry in pencil under “London”; Home Office Succession Book, ho 51/117. 94 Brown ms, nls 2868 ff. 1–2v. 95 London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 1810. 96 Hand-coloured aquatints, Gale off the Cape of Good Hope, Quarter Deck of an Indiaman (with faint pencil sketch of naval vessels on reverse), and A Man Overboard, Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme

398

97 98 99 100 101 102

103 104 105 106 107

108 109 110

111

112 113 114 115

116

N o t e s t o p a g e s 159–64

[publishers], 1 February 1810, 183 x 256mm approx., nmm, paf 4991–3. Bernard Smith, European Vision, 148. Farington, 30 October 1793, 1: 79. William Daniell, bm Sketch Book 166 c 20, 1930.3.11.4 (7&8); Farington, 1 June 1807, 8: 3054. Farington, 5 July 1806, 6: 2804. Raimbach, Memoirs, 50. Farington, 4 May and 11 July 1801, 4: 1546 and 1577. See also 1475, 1512, 1528, 1544, 1553, and 9: 3189–90. See Thomas Sutton, The Daniells, Artists and Travellers, 113. Farington, 9 August 1804, 6: 2389–90. Farington, 7 August 1806, 8: 2834. Naval Chronicle, 3: 38–45, and 273–4. Farington, 9 August 1804, 6: 2389–90. William Daniell, artist, engraver & publisher, The Fleet of the East India Company homeward bound from China, under the Command of St Nathanial Dance; engaging and repulsing a French Squadron … near the Straits of Malacca, on the XVth February 1804, coloured aquatint, 492 x 854mm, 20 Sep 1804 nmm pai 6125; bm 1917.12.8.4600. Sutton, The Daniells, 163. Farington, 23 September 1804 and 27 May 1805, 6: 2415 and 7: 2562. 1: plate 5. Sutton, The Daniells, 119 and 185. Signed oil on canvas, 31⬙ x 47.5⬙, The Action of Commodore Dance and the Comte de Linois off the Strait of Malacca, 15th February 1804, sold at Sotheby’s 18.11.1997, Whitt Library Files. Print 378 x 482mm, The China Fleet heavily laden Commanded by Commodore Sir Nathaniel Dance beating off Admiral Linois and his Squadron the 15th of February 1804, engraved by John Clarke and H. Merke, and published by Edward Orme. nmm pag 9019. See Cordingly, Marine Painting in England, 95. It has been impossible to find confirmation of an appointment in the minutes of the East India Company’s Board between 1800 and 1820. S.I. Neele, engraver, with Thomas Tomkins and James Fittler, Commemorative Plate of Dance’s Action, bm J16.21. Oil, 26½⬙ x 42½⬙, nmm bhc 1842. Oil, 22⬙ x 42⬙, nmm bhc 1867. Presently exhibited in the “Trade and Empire” Gallery at the National Maritime Museum. When the Dreadnought was launched she broke a new 24inch cable without being checked, (1801) graphite. 147 x 247mm, nmm pad 8888. Farington, 30 March 1809, 9: 3427.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 165–71

399

chapter five, trafalgar

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19

20

21

22

George, Catalogue #10222; Caricature, 72. George, Catalogue #10424 and 10432; Caricature, 81–3. Farington, 7 November 1805, 7: 2645. Gilbert Elliot, Lord Minto, to his wife, 10 November 1805. In Emma Kynynmound, ed., Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of Minto, 1874, 3: 373–4. Angelo, Angelo’s Pic Nic, 257. Farington, 19 December 1805, 7: 2663–4. See also 14 March 1806, 2691. Farington, 4 June 1806, 7: 2778. Farington, 10 December 1820, 16: 5592. Haydon, Autobiography, 31; and Diary June–August 1809, 1: 77. Farington, 8 January 1806, 7: 2669. Letter to Stephen Rigaud, 12 January 1806, in: Rigaud, Facts and Recollections, 121. bm 1865.1.14.743; Ticket of Admission, nmm pai 4852. Whitman, Charles Turner, 9. Haydon, Autobiography, 31. Journals of George Ticknor, Boston, 1876, 1: 63. Quoted in Erffa and Staley, 222. Farington, 19 November 1805, 7: 2652. Farington, 4: 1333–4, 1514; 6: 2110, 2195, 2172–3, 2183, 2212, 2331, 2337, 2402, 2410, 2457; 7: 2492, 2515, 2536, 2774; 8: 3049. Farington, 11 May 1806, 7: 2757. West, The Immortality of Nelson 1807, oil 35.5⬙ x 29.5⬙, nmm bhc 0566; engraving (as Apotheosis of Nelson) by Charles Heath 340 x 278mm, “First state,” and “Proof, without banners and tablets,” nmm pai 4812–3. The Quarterly Review, 1810, London: John Murray, and Edinburgh: John Ballantyne, 3: 224. Review of The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson, K.B., from his Lordship’s Manuscripts, by Rev. Stanier Clarke, F.R.S., Librarian to the Prince, and Chaplain to his Royal Highness’s Household; and John M’Arthur, Esq. L.L.D. late secretary to Admiral Lord Viscount Hood, 2 Vols., London: Cadell and Davies, 1809. Romney, Shipwreck at the Cape of Good Hope. Dutch E.I. Jonge Thomas (in a hurricane) on the sands at Zout River, June 1 1773, engraved by Thomas Medland and published 30 April 1800 by Bunney and Gold. nmm pad 6345. West, Sketch for a Monument to Lord Nelson 1807, Yale Center for British Art; Erffa and Staley, 223–5. Farington, 16 March 1807, 8:

400

23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

N o t e s t o p a g e s 173–8

2989. The Sketch was brought back to London for the 2001 Courtauld “Art on the Line” exhibition. West, The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, Death of Nelson, 34½⬙ x 28½⬙, nmm bhc 0566. 182.2 x 247.6cm, wag 3132. Two studies wag 9709 and 9710. The Times, 11 April 1806, 3a. Letter from West to Watkins Trench, 17 February 1806, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Quoted in Erffa and Staley, 222. James Heath, engraver and publisher, The Death of Lord Nelson, after West, 503 x 632mm, nmm pah 8031; This Outline is a Key to the Portraits etc. in the Print from Mr West’s Picture Death of Lord Nelson, 430 x 625mm, nmm pah 8032; Farington, 23 March 1811, 11: 3898. Farington, 8: 3064; and Erffa and Staley, 222. Erffa and Staley, 220–1. Farington, 16 March and 2 July 1806, 21 April 1807 and 15 May 1820, 7: 2694, 2776, 2781, 8: 3029 and 14: 5506. Farington, 8 July 1806, 12 December 1807, 23 March and 20 May 1811, 8: 2806, 3162, 11: 3898 and 3933. Raimbach, Memoirs, 19. Arthur William Devis, The Death of Nelson, oil, 77⬙ x 103⬙ nmm bhc 2894. The Artist, 1 no. 21 (1 August 1807): 10. The Examiner, No. 66 (2 April 1809): 222. Dorinda Evans, Mather Brown: Early American Artist in England, 145. The Examiner, No. 59 (12 February 1809): 110. The Times, No. 7097 (13 July 1807): 4a. It is now in the Nelson gallery of the National Maritime Museum. William Bromley, engraver, Death of Admiral Lord Nelson, after Devis, published by Boydell & Co, 2 March 1812, 492 x 615mm, nmm pai 5458. Mather Brown to J. Birt, 30 October 1807, Brown Album, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (noted in Evans, 145n.) Mrs Copley to Mrs Greene, 23 August 1806, Amory, The Domestic and Artistic Life of J.S. Copley, 281. Farington, 11 March 1803 and 29 March 1804, 5: 1992; 6: 2284. Farington, 17 August 1810, 10: 3712. Oil 30⬙ x 42⬙, nmm bhc 0552. See Louis Alexander Fagan, “Denis Dighton,” dnb, 541. The Examiner, No. 888 (6 February 1825): 88. Graves, Royal Academy 2: 374, 1806 no. 505; BI . p. 165 1807, Death of Nelson 5.8⬙ x 4.1⬙, Death of Nelson with Portraits, 10.08⬙ x 13.6⬙; The Times, No. 7031 (27 April 1807): 3c.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 179–85

401

47 The Examiner, No. 7 (14 February 1808): 110. 48 The Examiner, No. 888 (6 February 1825): 88. 49 Samuel Drummond, The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, oil, 60⬙ x 92½⬙, nmm bhc 0550. 50 Samuel Drummond, The Death of Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, 314.9 x 408.9cm, c. 1812, wag no. 3088. This was presumably the version exhibited at the Liverpool Academy 1812, no 109. 51 Studies for Drummond’s The Death of Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, nmm #1, 23½⬙ x 28⬙, bhc 0543; #2, 28½⬙ x 32⬙, bhc 0547; #3, 29⬙ x 36⬙, bhc 0551; 23⬙ x 31⬙ wag; the Government Picture Collection, no. 14966; and the Ben Burgess Collection which is probably now in the collection of the new Nelson Museum at Great Yarmouth. (Letter: Norma Watt, Assistant Keeper of Art, Norwich Castle Study Centre, 8 February 2002.) 52 Watercolour with bodycolour and ink, 327 x 236mm, nmm paf 5982. 53 Engraving published by George Clint and J. Goldwin, 9 Feb. 1807, nmm pah 8026; etching published by Drummond, 9 October 1809, pai 5445 and pag 7077. 54 Norwich Castle Museum, oil on canvas, 71.1 x 76.2 cm, purchased with the aid of a grant from the Victoria & Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, 1975. Another version, 50⬙ x 40⬙, sold at Christie’s 22.7.1971. 55 Drummond, also known as Captain William Rogers capturing the Jeune Richard, 1 October 1807, oil, 62⬙ x 47⬙, included in the 2001 Courtauld “Art on the Line” exhibition. nmm bhc 0579. 56 William Ward, engraver, The Windsor Castle Packet … Commanded by Captn Rogers capturing the Jeune Richard … after Samuel Drummond, published by Drummond, 21 June 1809, mezzotint. 836 x 565mm, nmm pai 6156. 57 Graves, Royal Academy, 2: 375, sv. “Miss H. Nelson.” 58 Haydon, 19 December 1812, 1: 268. 59 Haydon, 23 July 1808, 1: 4, 7 and 40. 60 Farington, 24 January and 14 March 1804, 6: 2224, 2267. 61 63.1 x 88.7cm, Whitt Library file. 62 Whitt Library file. 63 nmm 24⬙ x 35⬙, bhc 0554. 64 Appendix E, Joseph Allen, Admiral Hargood, 287. 65 Buttersworth, Battle of Traflagar, 21 Oct 1805, watercolour, signed and dated 1806, 363 x 476mm, nmm pah 9511 66 Watercolour, 174 x 252mm, signed, nmm paf 5885. 67 See Fenwick, H.M.S. Victory, 106–62 passim, and 221. 68 146 x 220mm, bm 870.12.10.234. See Nicholas Tracy, “Sir Robert Calder’s Action,” The Mariners’ Mirror, 77 (August 1991) No. 3: 259–69.

402

N o t e s t o p a g e s 185–90

69 Pocock, The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805: beginning of the action, 28⬙ x 40⬙, nmm bhc 0548. 70 Pocock, The Battle of Trafalgar, 120 x 185cm, Royal Naval Museum, Accession 1982/95. 71 Both 30½⬙ x 48½⬙, nmm bhc 0539–0540. 72 Tracy Collection. 73 Robert Cleveley, Battle of Trafalgar (designs for decoration of presentation swords?), watercolour, 61 x 109mm, nmm paf 5854–5. 74 Farington, 4 March 1810, 10: 3610. 75 Wilmerding, American Marine Painting, 124. 76 The Battle of Trafalgar. This Plate representing the exact position of the Victory and of the leading Ships of each Line … is Dedicated to the Memory of Lord Viscount Nelson … (proof), engraved and published 1 Feb 1807 by Thomas Hellyer, 509 x 755mm nmm pai 5442. 77 The Glorious Naval Victory of the Battle of Trafalgar or British Tars Triumphant over the Fleets of France and Spain, engraved on wood and published by George Thompson, 14 Dec. 1805, 625 x 965mm, nmm pai 5443. 78 Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 124. 79 20⬙ x 28½⬙, v&a, ws4 169–1888. Photo ct 968. 80 Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 37. 81 Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 23–4. 82 Farington, 25–26 February and 2 March 1799, 4: 1164 and 1166. 83 Dayes, Works, 345. 84 Letter of 29 May 1802, Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 34. See Farington, 12 and 20 May 1802, 5: 1777, 1779. 85 Letter of 23 May 1803, Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, 35. 86 Seven are in the Oppé collection at the Tate Gallery, t08120–21 and T08738–742, and another nine are in the Victoria and Albert Museum wd13; see Graham Reynolds, Catalogue of the Constable Collection, 1960, 46–9 Nos. 41–50. 87 Farington, 10 April 1806, 7: 2712. 88 Farington, 29 September and 11 November 1816, 15 April, 21 May and 12 June 1817, and 1 November 1819, 14: 4903, 4922, 5002, 5021, 5035 and 15: 5422. 89 Graham Reynolds, Constable: the Natural Painter; Catalogue of the Constable Collection, 54, cat. no. 65. 90 Sir Charles Holmes, in Peter Leslie (ed.), The Letters of John Constable, R.A., to C.R. Leslie, R.A., 1826–1837, 1931. xvi–xvii. 91 Constable to William Hookham Carpenter, 15 February 1830, in: Shirley, The Published Mezzotints of David Lucas after John Con-

N o t e s t o p a g e s 190–201

92 93 94 95

403

stable, R.A., A Catalogue and Historical Account [With Correspondence of Constable and Lucas], 23 #11. Constable to David Lucas, 12 March 1831, in Shirley, 47, 48. The Examiner, No. 888 (6 February 1825): 88. Lionel Henry Cust, “Michael William Sharp,” dnb, 1902. Lionel Henry Cust, “Alexander Fraser,” dnb, 735. c h a p t e r s i x , t h e wo r l d wa r

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14

15

16 17

18 19 20

Parliamentary Debates, 8 (1806): 44. George, Catalogue #10623; Caricature, 96. Farington, 1 June 1810, 10: 3662. Royal Academy Archives, Lawrence to Farington, 21 September 1808, law/1/205. Haydon, 28 April 1809, 1: 58–9. Haydon, 1: 72-3. Farington, 31 October 1807, 30 April 1808 and 2 August 1809, 8: 3131, 9: 3269 and 10: 3521. George, Catalogue #10762; Caricature, 104. See also Thomas Tegg, More Ships or Good News from Copenhagen!!, coloured etching, 247 x 349mm, nmm paf 3997. Naval Chronicle, 4: 47–8, 75–93, 105–10. George, Catalogue #11365; Caricature, 121. Farington, 20 July 1810, 10: 3694. Farington, 29 March 1809, 9: 3427. Butlin and Joll [Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner], 1: 36. Graphite, Sir J.T .Duckworth. St. Domingo 6 February 1806, 235 x 301mm, nmm pad 8818; oil, 48⬙ x 72⬙, Duckworth’s Action off San Domingo, 6 February 1806, nmm bhc 0571. Duckworth’s action in the Dardanelles, sketch plan showing the position of the ships 14 Feb, 1807 with descriptive notes by Pocock, pen and ink 215 x 290mm, nmm pad 8817. Graves, The British Institute 1806–1867, 433–4. Oil, 14⬙ x 21½⬙, signed and dated 1807. nmm bhc 1096. Fittler engraving, published 15 November 1808 by T. Cadell and W. Davies, Strand, bm 1891.4.14.91. nal, rc 12: 12–13. Farington, 18 January 1805, 1, 14, and 24 December 1807, 7: 2500, 8: 3153, 3170 and 3180. Whitcombe, Forcing the Passage, 21⬙ x 30⬙, nmm bhc 0575, Action in the Dardanelles, 32.25⬙ x 44⬙, bhc 0576; and Whitcombe prints, coloured aquatint engraving by Thomas Sutherland … Duckworth

404

21 22

23

24

25

26 27 28 29

N o t e s t o p a g e s 201–3

forcing the Narrow Channel of the Dardanelles, February 19th 1807, 152 x 210mm, pad 5769 and Destruction of the Turkish Fleet, February 19th 1807, 155 x 213mm, pad 5770. Buttersworth, watercolour c. 1813, 262 x 680mm, nmm pah 9512. List of the Cadet Company in August 1790, Continued till September 1793, pro wo 149/1 # 117; and War Office, A List of all the Officers of the Army, 11 March 1796 and 1 February 1805, 387. Cockburn’s captain’s commission was dated 19 July 1804, effective 17 May 1803. The Siege of Copenhagen. Plate 1… the English Fleet & Transports preparatory to & during the Bombardment the Windmill Battery & the Village of Fredericsberg; Plate 2… View taken from the top of the Royal Palace of Fredericsberg, represents the City of Copenhagen previous to the Bombardment; Plate III… View taken from the top of the Royal Palace of Fredericsberg, represents the City of Copenhagen previous to the Bombardment; Plate 4… the Island of Amak & the Coast of Sweden, the Advanced Squadron under Sir Samuel Hood, with the British Batteries & Danish Gun Boats engaging; Plate V… the Castles of Cronborg and Elsimborg, the entrance into the Sound, with the British Fleet & Transports, 2 November 1807, hand coloured aquatints by Robert Pollard, J. Hill and Joseph Constantine Stadler, 413 x 522mm, nmm pah 8059–8063. See “The Bombardment of Copenhagen, 1807, The Journal of Surgeon Charles Chambers of H.M. Fireship Prometheus,” in Perrin, Naval Miscellany III, 365–466. Etching, coloured. A Plan of the City of Copenhagen, with the adjacent ground showing the positions of the several batteries erected by the British during the Siege in September 1807 commanded by Lieutenant General Lord Cathcart &c &c., published 4 Dec 1807, and The Bombardment of Copenhagen and Surrender of the Danish Fleet, To the British Forces under the Command of Admiral Gambier, and Lord Cathcart, September 7, 1807, published 28 Sep 1807, 674 x 457mm, printed by J. Dennett, nmm pag 9046; pah 8056. Attributed to Pocock and possibly Livesay, d.c. 1835, watercolour, H.M.S. Justitia (74 Guns) Captured from Denmark by Lord Gambier at Copenhagen Sept. 7 1808, Entered into the British Navy 1807, nmm pag 9735. See below p. 254. See below p. 295–6. 6 May 1809, artist unknown, hand-coloured, 377 x 481mm, nmm pag 9054. 1 February 1817, nmm pai 5778. Jenkins’s Naval Achievements has been republished in facsimile, 1998. See James Taylor, Marine Painting, 83.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 205–15

405

30 Engraved by Clark, published 12 October 1809, nmm paf 4777. See Naval Chronicle, 4: 273. 31 Succession of Artillery Captains, 1793–1817, pro wo 25/3994. 32 Williams, engraver, after Henry Aston Barker, Flushing during the Siege taken from the Knole House Dyke, 1809, aquatint and etching, coloured, 226 x 590mm, published by T. Patser, 6 February 1810, bm 1867.2.9.1623 and nmm pai 5769. 33 Forcing the Mouth of the Scheldt 14 August 1809, British School, ca. 1809, pen and ink, 202 x 352mm, nmm pad 8529. 34 English entering Middleburg. Scheldt Aug. 1809; … bombarding Flushing … Landing in Ter Verre …; 255 x 352mm, aquatint engraving by J. Dietrich. nmm pad 5782–4. 35 35.Watercolour, 12⬙ x 8⅝⬙, City of Norwich Museum. 36 Sydney D. Kitson, The Life of John Sell Cotman, 1927, 127. 37 Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, Felbrigg, The Story of a House,, 221–3. See Captain’s Log of Mars, 31 July 1807, pro adm 51/1691. 38 bm, 1902.5.14.32. 39 bm 1940.12.14.81–2 40 John Knox Laughton, dnb, 213; See The Transactions of Sir Jahleel Brenton at the Cape of Good Hope, pro adm 7/2–6. 41 Lt. Thomas’s service record, pro adm 9/14 #5209. See O’Byrne, 1170. H.M.S. Hero wrecked on the Texel in 1811, nmm pah 4371. 42 434 x 580mm, published by Logman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 16 October 1811, bm 1917.12.8.4597 and nmm pag 9056 and 9057. See Naval Chronicle 17: 192 and 18: 101–2. 43 Published by W. Haines in April 1813, nmm paf 4779–86. 44 Haydon, 7 January 1813, 1: 283. 45 George, Catalogue #12311 and 12090; Caricature, 157. 46 Farington, 30 March 1814, 13: 4474. See also 22 August 1814, 13: 4573. 47 Buttersworth, sold at Maggs, 1914; Schetky, see page 256. 48 Engraved by J. Jeakes and published by J. Burr and G. Ballisat, Gracechurch Street, London, 1 June 1815. bm 1940.12.14.90–1. See Naval Chronicle, 5: 267–72. 49 bm 1871.11.11.675. 50 Coloured aquatint, 155 x 233mm, pad 5839; and 217 x 300mm, published 1 February 1817, pad 5840. See Naval Chronicle, 5: 167. 51 Engraved by Sutherland and published by Whitmore and Fenn, Charing Cross, 1 May 1816, bm 1871.11.11.664. 52 “Minutes of the Society of Artists,” 1808–1813; “First Public Exhibition of Paintings in Scotland by Artists, Exhibition Room Mr. Core’s Lyceum,” Edinburgh: Alexander Smellie, 1808; “Second Public Exhibition of Paintings in Scotland by Artists,” Exhibition Room

406

53 54 55

56

57

58 59 60 61 62 63

64

65

N o t e s t o p a g e s 216–18

No 16 York Place, 3 April 1809, Edinburgh: Alexander Smellie, 1809; “Fourth Exhibition …” 8 April 1811; “Fifth Exhibition …” 6 April 1812; and “Catalogue of the Edinburgh Exhibition of Paintings for 1815 at Number 32 York Place,” Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyde, 1815. Edinburgh Evening Courant, 2 May and 16 June 1808, Nos. 15140 and 15159. Elwood ms. Number 35 in the 1812 Exhibition catalogue, and number 71 in the 1812 catalogue and in the post office directories. Graves, Royal Academy, 8: 354. “View of Edinburgh Castle from the Cannon Mills, Waters of Leith – morning” no. 153, and “ Composition, Landscape” no. 225. His name is given as J.E.H. Woolford. wo 54/564 “New Brunswick”; Acadian Recorder 26 June, 3, 10, 17, 24 July etc.; The Dalhousie Journals, Marjorie Whitelaw, ed., 3 vols., Oberon, ca. 1978, 3 July 1819, 1: 120. See Elwood ms. Title Page for “The First Series of a Selection of Views Illustrating Nova Scotia Scenery” dedicated to his Excellency Lieutenant-General George Earl of Dalhousie, July 1919, nac, Documentary Art Division, Accession No. 1993–335–5. See Anon., Catalogue of the William Inglis Morse Collection, 114–15. Dalhousie, 3 and 7 July 1819, 1: 120 and 125. See also 137. Sketches in the Canadas, 3, American Sketches, nac; see Martha Marleau, “John Elliott Woolford, 1778–1866.” Dalhousie, 2: 71, 86–100, and 196–9. Naval Chronicle, 5: 203–6. Woolford, Kingston Dockyard – Fort Henry, ngc 23423; MacKay, dcb 9: 849–50. The Headquarters, January 17 1866; return for New Brunswick, 1 April 1828, wo 54/564. The Deputy Storekeeper at Saint John was a Frederick Charles Frith. New Brunswick Archives, photofile P4/2/41. He was a friend of John Simcoe Saunders, whose small son Henry Chatmore, “breakfast[ed] with Mr. W. every Sunday morning and he enquiries very much after you.” (Letter to his father, 13 July [1847], Saunders papers, reel 3). Woolford died intestate. For the last 25 years of his life he had been looked after by Charles Mills and his wife, and for the last 20 by John Edwards, who quarrelled about the disposal of his property. See Journals of the House of Assembly of New Brunswick, 1882 160–3; Probate Papers, J.E. Woolford, unb Archives, w 252; and Elwood ms. nas, gd 45/3/592 ff 60 r and v, and 61 r (copy in Canadian National Archives). Drawings at co 188/35, and unb Archives. There is no evidence that Woolford also designed the county jail –

N o t e s t o p a g e s 219–22

66 67 68

69

70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77

78 79 80 81 82 83

407

although it has been attributed to him (communication from George MacBeath, 7/16/2002). The Purser, pen and ink, 246 x 186mm, nmm paf 5943, etc. The Press Gang, pen and ink with graphite and watercolour, 166 x 232mm, nmm paf 5934. Board Room of the Admiralty, coloured aquatint engraving by John Hill and Augustus Charles Pugin after work by Thomas Rowlandson, published by Rudolph Ackermann, 1 January 1808, 276 x 330mm, nmm pad 1358. See also Board Room. Meeting of the Lords of the Admiraly, steel engraving by Melville after Rowlandson, published by J. Mead and M.M. Aubert, 136 x 188mm, nmm pai 8306; and pai 8809 engraving and etching 196 x 244mm Thomas Rowlandson, Boarding a Man-of-War. A Boat Load of People Waiting Their Turn, 1815, 85/12 x 5½⬙, an illustration to an Ackermann book, Naples and the Campagna Felica. v&a dg 31a Dyce 811. Garneray, Prison hulks in Portsmouth harbour, ca. 1810, 10½⬙ x 21⬙ nmm bhc 1923. Style of Daniel Turner, Prison hulks in Portsmouth harbour, 17⬙ x 40½⬙ and 21½⬙ x 41⬙, nmm bhc 1924–25. Daniel Turner, Nelson’s funeral procession on the Thames, 9 January 1806, 23⬙ x 42⬙ and 10⬙ x 18½⬙, bhc 0569 and 4151. Prison Hulk, engraving by George Cooke after Samuel Prout and W.H. Harriot, watercolour 249 x 375mm, nmm paf 6122. Atkins, Under Repair, watercolour 102 x 304mm, nmm pad 8941. Atkins, A Frigate Action, pen and watercolour, 116 x 165mm, signed, nmm pad 8940. Payne, Anchors, Stocks and Flukes, watercolour 245 x 390mm, and Dover 1815, Capstan, Posts and Flags 233 x 393mm, nmm pad 8591–2. David Japes, William Payne: A Plymouth Experience, Exeter: The Royal Albert Museum, 1992; 3–11. Plymouth Dockyard taken from under the Battery at Mount Edgcumbe, with the Royal Sovereign and Glory on the Stocks, 13¾⬙ x 18½⬙, signed, and dated 1786 in the mount, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery; Dock from Empacombe, 15⅞⬙ x 22¼⬙, signed, c. 1788–89, private collection. Long, Basil S., “William Payne,” in Walker’s Quarterly, No. 6, January 1922; David Japes, William Payne. a Plymouth experience. Plates 462–63 by Baily, Naval Chronicle, 5: 221, 235. G.S. Smith’s service record, pro adm 9/12 #4183; Undaunted’s Captain’s Log, adm 51/2932. Haydon, 23 June 1815, 1: 456. George, Caricature, 165. Farington, 21 July 1815, 13: 4678.

408

N o t e s t o p a g e s 222–30

84 Captain’s Half-Pay Accounts, pro, adm 25/170: 19. Tobin, Bonaparte in Torbay, coloured aquatint, 304 x 405mm, nmm paf 7978. 85 Edward Orme, St. Helena, coloured aquatint, 327 x 452mm, nmm pah 3037. 86 Emperor Napoleon being transported in H.M.S. Northumberland to imprisonment at the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. Watercolour. bm 1884.11.8.13. 87 pro adm 9/16: 5781. 88 bm y.6.159. See Altick, The Shows of London, 176. 89 The Examiner, No. 79 (2 July 1809): 426. 90 Farington, 14 August 1810, 10: 3710. 91 The Examiner, No. 175 (5 May 1811): 284. 92 The Examiner, No. 245 (6 September 1812): 572. 93 Farington, 4 February and 4 September 1816, 23 May, and 10 July 1817, 14: 4777, 4897, 5022, and 5052. c h a p t e r s e v e n , o f f i c i a l pa i n t e rs 1 Edwards, Anecdotes, 245. 2 Dayes, Works, 332. See plates in Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages, 1985, 2 (Charts and Coastal Views): plates 17–19. 3 Hodges, William. Travels in India during the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783. London: J. Edwards, 1793, 155. See Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 36–75. 4 Farington, 2 March 1797, 3: 783. 5 Farington, 13 March 1797 and 27 September 1806, 3:794–6 and 8: 2860–2. 6 See Lionel Henry Cust, “John Cleveley,” dnb, 387. 7 Edwards, Anecdotes, 214. 8 Russett, Serres, 23–6 and 35–45. 9 Pyne, Wine and Walnuts, 2: 82. 10 Holcroft, Memoirs, 23 December 1798, 3: 105–6. See Russett, Serres, 171–6. 11 J.T. Serres to his parents, 27 September 1790, nmm, Phillips mss 26/x ref. R.C. I/14, quoted in Russett, Serres, 200. 12 Anon. A Catalogue … chiefly consisting of the works and property of Mr. Serres. 13 Russett, Serres, 126–7, 130, 181–3, 199; Bosanquet, “The Maritime School at Chelsea.” See A View of the Naval Academy, Chelsea, nmm 125(58). 14 pro ind 10727. 15 Williams, A Liberal Critique, 20. 16 Farington, 1: 214 and 217; and pro adm 12/69 21 January 1796.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 230–7

17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34

35 36 37

409

Reference to: adm 1 “Promiscuous ‘S’” 79. Unfortunately, the Promiscuous letter files prior to 1800 have been destroyed. J.T. Serres, 68 x 101mm nmm pad 8647; and Dominic Serres, 463 x 633mm, pah 3991. “View of Toulon Harbour,” possibly by J.T. Serres, c. 1796. bl Add. ms 70955. bl, Maps, K. Top.18.76.d.f. bl, Add. ms 35200 ff. 216–7; published in Morriss, Blockade of Brest, 414 no. 496. There is no reference to Serres in Clyde’s Pay Book, pro adm 35/329, in the Admiralty Treasurers records adm 16/133 or 134, or in the Treasury files T2/32 or 34. Nor is there reference in the obvious Admiralty correspondence files: adm 1/116, adm 1/5015, adm 2/138, or adm 2/624. He may have been paid from Secret Service funds. bl Add. ms 75,844. Published in Morriss, Blockade of Brest, 505 no. 607. Log of the Clyde, 28 June 1800 to 5 July, pro adm 51/1332; and Muster of hms Clyde 28 June 1800, adm 36/15306. There is no mention of Serres in the log of hms Nymph, adm 51/1309. In-Letter from Captain Thomas Williams, 9 September 1800, pro adm 1/2691, “Captains’ Letters ‘W’” 191–17. rnm Acc. 2001/59: 420. See Andrew David, in Joppien and Smith, Charts and Coastal Views of Captain Cook’s Voyages, 1: xl–xli. Serres’s letters to his publishers, Fitzwilliam 26/4/1802. Tooley, Tooley’s Dictionary of Mapmakers, 403–4. Anon., Memoir of John Thomas Serres, 51–2. See Pendered and Mallett, Princess or Pretender?, 84–98. Signed and dated October 1790. See Russett, Serres, 202. For example, A Calm inside the Harbour of Genoa, 32½⬙ x 40⬙, 1791 (exhibited R.A. 1792); Bay of Naples, and A British Frigate and other Shipping Outside a Spanish Harbour, 8⬙ x 13½⬙, 1790; and Looking Towards Limehouse, watercolour, 8⬙ x 13½⬙, 1790. Whitt Library Files. Anon, Memoir of John Thomas Serres, 10–16. Farington, 5 August 1795, 9 July 1796, 17 February 1804, 12 June and 10 July 1813, 2: 374 and 598, 6: 2247, 12: 4368, and 4389–90. Farington, 8 June 1813, 12: 4366. Farington, 12 and 17 June 1802, 12 January and 3 May 1803, 5: 1786, 1789, 1960 and 6: 2024. See [George Field?], A Prospectus, &c. of the British School Farington, 19 December 1803, 6: 2196. Farington, 20 June 1804, 7: 2355–6. Farington, 24 July 1806, 8: 2833.

410

N o t e s t o p a g e s 237–44

38 Oil, 22⬙ x 32⬙, sold at Sotheby’s 9 March 1988, Whitt Library File. 39 “To Admiral Sir Hyde Parker Kt. Commander in Chief, Vice Admiral Lord Nelson and Rear Admiral Thomas Graves, the Captains, Officers, Seamen, Marines and Soldiers of the British Fleet this plate representing the Defeat of the Danish Fleet and Batteries off Copenhagen the second of April 1801, is dedicated with the greatest respect by their Most Obedient Humble Servant, P.W. Tomkins” London, Published as the Act Directs, July 4 1801, by P.W. Tomkins, no. 49 New Bond Street. nmm pai 5754, 6108 and 6112–17, bm ps 300387. 40 pro, adm 12/108, and adm 1/5016, “Promiscuous ‘S’” 134; Panoramic Picture of Boulogne Great Room, Spring Gardens, Painted by Mr. Serres, Marine Painter to His Majesty., and etching, Pandaemonium of Boulogne by Serres … on a scale of 3804 superficial feet, AD 1804, bm 1878.7.13.4654; See Richard Altick, The Shows of London, 136. 41 Serres, Liber Nauticus. Two views of a mast hulk, No. 2 Plate 9, aquatinted by John Clark and R. Harraden, and printed by Edward Orme. bm 1872.8.10.759. 42 Russett, Serres, 194 and 196. 43 Farington, 17 February and 4 October 1810, 10: 3601 and 11: 4004. 44 Farington, 9 July 1806, 8: 2807. 45 Farington, 3 August 1812, 12: 4166. 46 William Sandby, History of the Royal Academy, 1: 272–3; Herrmann, 226. 47 Walford, Old and New London, 6: 413. 48 J.T. Serres, “Man-o-War” n.d., v&a wd 194; 195.1890. 49 Pendered and Mallett, 90. Hamilton and Baylis, The Old Vic. 50 Horace Foote, A Companion to the Theatres, 74. 51 Mirror of Literature, 3 January 1835; Pendered and Mallett, 84. 52 pro, for example, ho/44/1, 12, 16-24, 28, 39; ho/45/7762; pc/1/4038, 4042; and ts/18/48, 112. 53 Pendered and Mallett, 226–33. 54 August 1822, 413 x 968mm, nmm pai 7705. Also The arrival of His Majesty George the Fourth at Gravesend, after having visited Edinburgh, 1st Sept. 1822, 326 x 901mm, nmm pai 7706. 55 Anon, Memoir of John Thomas Serres, 43. 56 Graves, The British Institute, 483–4: The Battle of Trafalgar, About 3 o’clock P.M. 3.6⬘ x 4.6⬘; The Battle of the Nile 3.8⬘ x 4.6⬘; The Commencement of the Battle of the Nile 3.6⬘ x 4.6⬘. 57 Signed and dated, 1824, 29½⬙ x 41½⬙, Christie’s 13 February, 1981, Whitt Library file. 58 Private Collection, Whitt Library file.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 245–50

411

59 To the Immortal Memory of … Nelson …This Representation of the Commencement of the Engagement with the Combined … Fleets off Cape Trafalgar on the 21st Oct 1805 … is inscribed …, aquatint & etching, coloured, published by C. Wigley, 1 February 1807, 426 x 752mm; … Strachan 482 x 755mm; Barham …, 422 x 751mm; Collingwood …, 425 x 743mm; published by John Fairburn. nmm pai 5438–41. 60 Royal Academy Council Records, c 1824–32 7: 93. 61 Farington, 23 May, 17 and 24 June 1801, 4 January 1808, 4: 1553, 1562, 1565, and 3189. 62 Flinders, 1: 221. 63 Smith, European Vision, 140–4. 64 Obituary article on Westall, Art Journal, 12 (1850): 104. 65 nmm bhc 1164, presently amongst the paintings in the Admiralty building in Whitehall, which is under reconstruction for use by the Cabinet Office. A graphite and wash study, 192 x 250mm, is at pad 8998. 66 Farington, 9 August 1804, 6: 2390; Roget, Old Watercolour Society, 262; Annual Register 1804: 551–2. 67 Farington, 9 August 1804, 6: 2390. 68 Westall, William; Thomas Melville Perry, and Donald Herbert Simpson, eds. Drawings by William Westall, landscape artist on board H.M.S. Investigator during the circumnavigation of Australia by Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N., in 1801–1803, 1962, 13. 69 Farington, 2 and 10 April 1809, 9: 3431 and 3434. See John Webber plates in Joppien and Smith, Charts and Coastal Views, 3: plates 17–21. 70 Graves, Royal Academy, 8: 231. 71 Farington, 9 August 1804, 6: 2390. 72 For example, Port Jackson, Sydney, 12⅝⬙ x 18⅞⬙, signed and dated 1804, exhibited at the Old Water Colour Society in 1812, and engraved for Flinders’s Voyage to Terra Australis, 1814. v&a wd 207 F.A. 485. See Brown, Ill-Starred Captains, 368–413. 73 v&a, wd 207 No. P 103–1922 74 Aquatint 220 x 267mm, nmm pai 3489, 3501 [215 x 267mm] and 3505 [218 x 270mm]. 75 Sloop Bonne Citoyenne,… engraved by Robert and Daniel Havell, published by Robert Cribb and Son, n.d., 470 x 611mm, nmm pah 8075; Island of Lissa …, engraved by H. Merke, 440 x 622mm, nmm pah 8094; … Shannon and the United States Frigate Chesapeake, John Theophilus Lee, engraved by Joseph Jeakes, and published by George, aquatint, coloured, 458 x 575mm nmm pah 8128–9. 76 Graves, Royal Academy, 8: 188–9.

412

N o t e s t o p a g e s 251–6

77 dnb, 1865. 78 Schetky, S.F. Ludmilla. Ninety Years Work and Play, Sketches from the Public and Private Career of John Christian Schetky, Late Marine Painter in Ordinary to Her Majesty, by his Daughter, 1877, 50. 79 Ludmilla Schetky, Ninety Years Work and Play, 75–6. 80 Schetky, Shipping around the rock of Gibralter, 207 x 336mm, nmm pad 9415. 81 Ludmilla Schetky, Ninety Years Work and Play, 94. 82 Ludmilla Schetky, Ninety Years Work and Play, 116–21. 83 nmm Sketch books at Box 1032a and 1270. 84 Schetky, Stern of the model of the Royal George, watercolour signed and dated Oct. 1839, 327 x 226mm, and Port Quarter of the model of the Royal George, watercolour, 226 x 227mm, nmm paf 6100, 6101; and Capstan of the Royal George (100 guns) sunk at Spithead 29th Augst 1782 – Recover’d from the wreck Octr 1839, drawn whilst in the Dockyard, Portsmouth, watercolour, signed and dated 7 November 1834, 227 x 330mm, pad 9417. 85 HMS Odin, 74 guns, captured from the Danish in 1807, at anchor in Portsmouth harbour. Watercolour with soft ground etching, 131 x 216mm, nmm pad 9418. 86 Schetky, Park, lithograph, 185 x 150mm, nmm pad 3341; caricatures: Scene below deck on a British naval sailing vessel, showing the galley fire ‘Jack at Oporto …’, Deck scene on board a British naval sailing vessel ‘Murdock Adrift …’, Boarding an enemy vessel from boats. ‘Make a Lane …’ (published by Whittaker, 1835), Ship’s boat crew looking for man overboard from British naval sailing vessel. (That’s not the man! that’s his Hat!),’ lithographs by Ducote and Stephens numbered “Schetky 1 to 4,” 84 x 140mm (approx.), paf 5039–5043. 87 Schetky, Re-Embarkation of His Majesty King George 4th at Leith 1822 (with mss key), hand-coloured aquatint by W. Bennett, 1823, 400 x 600mm, nmm pah 8165. 88 Art-Union 5 (June 1843): 159–78, reprinted in Olmsted 1: 421. 89 Schetky, Royal George, 1060 x 1829mm, Tate n01191; Schetky, 124–5, 127, 183–6. 90 Watercolour touched with body colour and white, probably over black chalk. bm 1890.5.12.136. 91 A Series of Four Views … No. 1 … HMS Shannon commencing the Battle with the American Frigate Chesapeake on the 1st June 1813 …, No. 2 … the American Frigate Chesapeake crippled and thrown into utter disorder by the two first broadsides fired from HMS Shannon, No. 3 … HMS Shannon carrying by Boarding the American Frigate Chesapeake after a Cannonade of Five Minutes, on the 1st June 1813, No. 4 … HMS Shannon leading her Prize the American

N o t e s t o p a g e s 256–70

92 93

94 95

413

Frigate Chesapeake into Halifax Harbour, on the 6th June 1813, lithographs by Louis Haghe for a pamphlet by Captain R.H. King, 490 x 621mm (approx.), published by Smith, Elder & Co. and printed by W. Day, 1830, nmm pah 8115–18, and 385 x 475mm (approx.) 8123–26. An attractive watercolour of The Shannon as a hulk at Sheerness 4 Sept 1844, was later painted by a Lt. George Pechell Mends (167 x 355mm, nmm, paf 6175). He had entered the navy in 1824 and been promoted lieutenant in 1841. Charles Baile de Laperriere, editor, The Royal Scottish Academy exhibitors 1826–1990, 119–20. Whitcombe (after Schetky), Engagement between His Majesty’s Ship Amelia … and L’Arethuse French Frigate … off the Isles of Loss, on the Coast of Africa … 7 February 1843, aquatint by Thomas Sutherland, coloured, 426 x 499mm, nmm pag 7102. See page 300. Ludmilla Schetky, Ninety Years Work and Play, 129. c h a p t e r e i g h t, pa i n t e rs o f t h e s e a

1 Johann Reinhold Forster, Observations made during a voyage round the world, on physical geography, natural history and ethic philosophy, 1778, 55–6. See Bernard Smith, European Vision, 39. 2 Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 47–8. 3 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1: 328. 4 The Naval Chronicle, London periodical, 1799, 1: 208–11, 477–9, and 517–20. 5 Quoted in Tom Taylor, Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2: 297–9. 6 Nicholas Pocock to Richard Bright, of Bristol, 6 Feb. 1804, nmm agc/22. 7 Mary Hartley to the Reverend William Gilpin, 14 February 1789, Bodleian, ms English Misc. d. 572. 8 Serres, Liber Nauticus, 4. 9 Haydon, 1: 72–3. 10 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1: 329–30; 374–6. chapter nine, joseph mallord william turner 1 Delacroix, The Journal of Eugène Delacroix, 458. 2 Leslie to Ruskin, 7 June 1884, in John Ruskin, Praeterita “Dilecta,” A.O.J. Cockshut ed., 457. 3 Robert Charles Leslie, A Waterbiography, 56. 4 George Leslie, The Inner Life of the Royal Academy, 144. 5 Ruskin, Praeterita, 234. 6 Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., Founded on

414

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

N o t e s t o p a g e s 270–7

Letters and Papers Furnished by His Friends and Fellow Academicians, Revised Edition, London: Chatto and Windus, 1877, xi. Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5: 287. William Cosmo Monkhouse, dnb, 1268. Dayes, Works, 352. Ruskin, Modern Painters, 3: 308–9. Farington, 12 November 1798, 3: 1090. Farington, 12 November 1798, 3: 1090. Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 37–8, 112; and Farington, 11 February 1809, 5: 111. Anthony Bailey, Standing in the Sun, A Life of J.M.W. Turner, 119–20. Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 31–2, 255–8; Bailey, 106–20. Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 80. Fuseli, Henry, ra, ed., 2nd ed. of the Rev. M. Pilkington’s Dictionary of Painters, 214. The Quarterly Review, February and May 1809: John Ballantyne, 1: 36. Review of Anecdotes of Painters who have resided or been born in England; with Critical Remarks on their Productions; by Edward Edwards, deceased, late Teacher of Perspective, and Associate in the Royal Academy; and intended as a Continuation to the Anecdotes of Painting by the late Horace Earl of Orford, London: Leigh and Sotheby, 1808. Bailey, 285–303. 34⬙ x 48⬙. Present whereabouts unknown. Engraved in 1812 for the Liber Studiorum. Butlin and Joll, 1: 2–3. Whitley, Artists and their Friends, 2: 215; Butlin and Joll, 1: 2–3. Farington, 3: 1074–5. Farington, 24 October 1798, 27 May 1799, 3: 1075 and 4: 1229; Whitley, Artists and their Friends, 1: 346. Farington, 16 November 1799, 4: 1303. T. Sidney Cooper, My Life, 1: 316. Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 96. Farington, 11 May 1804, 6: 2319–20. Matthew Brennan, Wordsworth, Turner, and Romantic Landscape, 38–41. Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 61 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5: 287–97. Stephen Rigaud, Memorandum of His Father, 106. Jerrold Ziff, “Backgrounds, Introduction of Architecture and Landscape: A Lecture by J.M.W. Turner.” See also “Turner and Poussin.” Ruskin, Modern Painters, 3: 311. Oil on canvas, support: 914 x 1222mm, Tate t01585.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 278–85

415

35 Dutch Boats, Private Collection; Fishermen on a Lee-Shore, Iveagh Bequest, Southampton Art Gallery. 36 Dunbar Sketch Book, Tate #54, 109, 110v, 116 and 116v. 37 Farington, 18 April 1801, 3 January 1803 and 1 April 1804, 4: 1539; 5: 1958; 6: 2286. 38 Oil on canvas, 172.1 x 240cm, ng, ng472. 39 Oil on canvas, support: 1705 x 2416mm, Tate n00476. 40 Farington, 1 April 1804 and 12 June 1815, 6: 2288 and 13: 4645. See Butlin and Joll, 1: 31. 41 Margaret Greaves, Regency Patron, 98–102. 42 Butlin and Joll, 1: 36. 43 David Hill, Turner on the Thames, 1993, 116–18. 44 Cyrus Redding, Fifty Years’ Recollections, 1: 199–205. Another version is in Redding’s Past Celebrities, and the earliest in Redding’s “The Late Joseph Mallord William Turner,” Fraser’s Magazine 45 (February 1852): 150–6, reprinted in Olmsted, John Charles [editor], Victorian Painting, Essays and Reviews, 2: 189–96. See Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 149; and the Turner Sketchbooks cxxx–cxxxiv, Tate Gallery. 45 Venice, 24⬙ x 36⬙, v&a fa208; Venice, San Giorgio …, Tate d32165; Life–Boat, 36⬙ x 48⬙, v&a fa211. 46 Oil on canvas, support: 857 x 1168mm, Tate n02702. 47 Oil on canvas, support: 604 x 950mm, Tate n02881. 48 Oil on canvas, support: 914 x 1219mm, Tate n00530. 49 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5: 342. 50 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5: 380–81. 51 Keelmen, nga, Washington dc; Rain, Steam and Speed, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 121.9cm, ng, ng538. 52 Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 108. 53 W.G. Rawlinson, “The Water-Colour Drawings of J.M.W. Turner, R.A.,” in The Watercolours of J.M.W. Turner, Special Number of The Studio, 1909. 54 Farington, 28 March 1804 and 10 July 1806, 6: 2288 and 8: 2808. 55 Farington, 13: 4645; Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 96–7. 56 Haydon, 3–16 June 1829, 3: 370–2. 57 See above, pp. 136–7. 58 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 59 Turner, drawing of hms Victory, Tate d08275 Box 283, and sketchbook tb 89–14, –18a etc. 60 Oil on canvas, support: 1708 x 2388 mm, Tate n00480. 61 Farington, 3 May 1803, 6: 2023–4. 62 Farington, 3 June 1806, 7: 2777. 63 The Examiner No. 6 (7 February 1808): 94.

416

N o t e s t o p a g e s 287–98

64 Review of Publications of Art, June 1808, 83. 65 John Pye, Sale Catalogue of the Shakespeare Gallery, in Patronage, 279–85. 66 “To the President and Council, and the Rest of the Academicians of the Royal Academy,” August 1807, in John Pye, Patronage of British Art, 254–7. See William Sandby, History of the Royal Academy, 1: 273–4. 67 Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 91–2, 101, 160. Sketchbook lxxix. Finsberg’s Life, 141–2. Water-colour Soc., 1808: W. (2) 141. 68 Paret, Imagined Battles, 71–6. 69 Oil on canvas, support: 1473 x 2388 mm, Tate n00500. 70 Farington, 17 November 1810, 1 February and 10 March 1812, 28 May 1813 and 8 May 1816, 10: 3800, 11: 4074, 4091, 12: 4358 and 14: 4845. 71 Thornbury’s Life, 115; Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 99–100. 72 Butlin and Joll, 1: 39. Ruskin, Harbours of England, 25. 73 Farington, 12 December 1807, 8: 3162. 74 The sketch is in the Tate, cxviii, and the finished painting at the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. 75 Butlin and Joll, 1: 39–40. Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 112, 138. 76 Junction of Thames and Medway, oil on canvas, 42⅞⬙ x 56⅝⬙ nga, Washington, Widener Collection 1942.9.87; Mouth of the Thames, oil on canvas, support: 857 x 1168 mm, Tate n02702; Sun Rising, oil on canvas, 134.6 x 179.1cm, ng, ng479. See Butlin and Joll, 1: 41–2, 44–6. 77 Confluence, oil on canvas, support: 910 x 1220 mm, Tate t03874; Sheerness as seen from the Nore, the Lloyd Collection. 78 91.7 x 122.2cm, ngc, no. 4423. See Butlin and Joll, 1: 53. 79 Farington, 12 May 1805, 11 May 1806 and 5 May 1807, 7: 2555 and 2758, and 8: 3038. 80 8 May 1808, 163. See also 162–7. 81 David Hill, Turner on the Thames, 116–7 and 143–7. 82 Review of Publications in Art, 162–4. 83 The Examiner, No. 19 (8 May 1808): 301. 84 Review of Publications in Art, 167. 85 The Examiner No. 75 (4 June 1809): 367. 86 Farington, 5 July 1809, 10: 3505–06. 87 Oil on canvas, support: 1714 x 2337 mm, Tate n00481. See Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 101, 232 n. 17. 88 Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 151. 89 Watercolour, Tate d00902. 90 Typescript in the National Gallery. Thornbury’s Life of J.M.W. Turner, 1862, 2: 52; Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 20. 91 Ruskin, Harbours of England, 29.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 298–306

417

92 Oil, 103⬙ x 145⬙, nmm bhc 0565; two sketches at Tate n00556 and n05480. 93 William James, Naval History, 4: 149–51. 94 Redding, Fifty Years’, 1: 199–205. 95 Ludmilla Schetky, Ninety Years Work and Play, 109, 129. 96 Tate T.B. 89–18v. 97 Ruskin, Harbours of England, 22. 98 Ruskin, Harbours of England, 37–8. 99 Victory, Portsmouth Harbour, August 26 1824, Schetky Sketchbook, nmm pai 0907. 100 Brewster, The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 16: 263–4. See Gerald Finley, “Turner’s Colour and Optics: A ‘New Route’ in 1822,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 36, 1973, 385–90. 101 Farington Diary, Greig, ed., 8: 304. 102 Alexander Joseph Finberg, Life of J.M.W. Turner, 1939, 273f.; Lindsay, J.M.W. Turner, 160. 103 Henry Tijou to Sir John Leicester, 22 December 1824. Douglas Hall, “The Tabley House Papers,” Walpole Society 1960–1962 (39 1962), letter of 21 Dec. 1824, 109–10. 104 Manuscript note by Munro in Francis Haskell’s copy of Walter Thornbury’s The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., 1: 271, quoted in Butlin and Joll, 1: 139–40. 105 24⬙ x 30.5⬙, v&a fa209. 106 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5: 290. 107 Turner, Portsmouth, Tate d18152; Devonport and Dockyard, Devonshire, Fogg Art Museum, Massachusetts, engraved by T. Jeavons, published 1830, Tate t06084. 108 Wreck, Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; Hulks, Petworth House, National Trust and hm Treasury. 109 Oil on canvas, support: 698 x 1359mm, Tate n02065. 110 28⬙ x 42⬙, in private hands, 1977, Butlin and Joll, 1: 175. 111 Vimieux, private collection, England. Butlin and Joll, 1: 175, 2: pl. 373. Library of the Fine Arts, 1 (no. 5): 419. 112 36⬙ x 48⬙, Life-Boat and Manby, v&a fa211. 113 Oil on canvas, 90.8 x 121.9cm, ng, ng524; and a smaller version 33 x 45.7cm, wag 416. 114 “Ye Mariners of England.” See Louis Hawes, “Turner’s Fighting Téméraire,” Art Quarterly, 35 (No.1, 1972): 22–48. 115 Michael Angelo Esq. Titmarsh, [William Makepeace Thackeray], “A Second Lecture on the Fine Arts,” Fraser’s Magazine, 19 (January–June 1839): 744; reprinted in Olmsted 1: 296. 116 “The Royal Academy, The Seventy-First Exhibition. 1839,” Art Union 1 (May 1839): 65–71, reprinted in Olmsted 1: 275. 117 Ruskin, Praeterita, 469.

418

N o t e s t o p a g e s 307–11

118 Robert Leslie to John Ruskin, 7–25 June 1884, Ruskin, “Dilecta,” 461–2. 119 Thackeray, “A Pictorial Rhapsody by Michael Angelo Titmarsh,” Fraser’s Magazine 21 (June 1840): 720–32, reprinted in Olmsted 1: 328. 120 Hulks, Oil on canvas, support: 892 x 1202mm, Tate t03881; Peace, Oil on canvas, support: 870 x 867mm, Tate n00528. 121 Thackeray, “An Exhibition Gossip, By Michael Angelo Titmarsh. In a Letter to Monsieur Guillaume, Peintre,” Ainsworth’s Magazine 1 (June 1842): 319–22, reprinted in Olmsted 1: 372. 122 Rockets and Blue Lights, Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. 123 Athenaeum (February 3 and 10, 1844), 105–7 and 132–3, reprinted in Olmsted 1: 463. 124 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 5: 349. 125 Thackeray, “Picture Gossip: In a Letter from Michael Angelo Titmarsh,” Fraser’s Magazine 31 (June 1845): 713–24, reprinted in Olmsted 1: 604. 126 “J.M.W. Turner R.A.,” Athenaeum, (December 27, 1851) 1382–3, (January 3 1852) 23–4, reprinted in Olmsted 2: 181–8; Thornbury, Old and New London, 1: 253. c h a p t e r t e n , p o s t wa r pa i n t e rs 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13

Farington, 11 April 1812, 11: 4109. Farington, 6 and 14 July 1820, 16: 5534 and 5537. The Examiner, No. 96 (29 October 1809): 698. nmm pad 3321, 247 x 181mm, engraved by Edward Scriven. See two large coloured prints of an action between La Pallas, and the sloops Fairy and Harpy, 6 February 1801, engraved by Francis Chesham after William Anderson: bm 1940.12.14.49–50; nmm pah 7969, published 1 January 1818, and pai 6415 n.d. City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Thomas Buttersworth, The arrival of George IV at Leith Harbour 1822, oil on canvas, 42.0 x 67.0cm Note by Malcolm Pinhorn in Whitt Library file. James Taylor, Marine Painting, 109. Graves, Royal Academy 2: 373–7. Minutes 8 June 1825, nal, rc Vol. 15 f. 33v; Graves, British Institute 166, 1825 #262 Battle of Trafalgar 4.2⬘ x 5⬘ (a version of the Death of Nelson?); the Examiner (7 May 1825): 298. Minutes, 4 July 1825, nal, rc: 15 f. 40v. Haydon, 30 November 1823 and 24 August 1829, 2: 439 and 3: 389–90. nmm bhc 0506. Also named: The Battle of Camperdown, 11 October 1797, Duncan receiving the surrender of Admiral de Winter.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 311–21

419

14 Sir James Watt, “Naval Surgery in the time of Nelson,” Age of Sail, 1 (2002): 25–33. 15 Minutes 14 March and 11 June 1827, nal, rc: 15 ff. 56v and 67v. 16 64⬙ x 87½⬙ nmm bhc 0476. See Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters, 1: 195 and Graves, British Institution, 64–5. 17 64⬙ x 88⬙, nmm bhc 0492. See Graves, British Institution, 308–9. 18 Graves, Royal Academy, 2: 373–7. 19 Sutton, The Daniells, 114–16. 20 Sutton, The Daniells, 161–73. 21 William Daniell, artist, engraver and publisher with Longman & Co, Steam boat on the Clyde near Dumbarton, 1 February 1817, coloured aquatint, 228 x 298mm, nmm pad 1319. 22 The Examiner, No. 888 (6 February 1825): 88. 23 nal, rc:15 ff. 42–42v. 24 Literary Gazette, January 8 1825: 28. See Henry Manners Chichester, “Samuel Daniell,” dnb, 500. 25 nmm pah 8167. 26 A First Rate Going Down the Channel; the Land’s End and Longships Lighthouse in the Distance, “She walks the water like a thing of life, etc.,” Admiral Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign breaking the Enemy’s Line …,” and Captain, afterwards Lord Collingwood, in the Excellent, of 74 Guns, attacking the Santissima Trinidad of 140 in the Battle off Cape St. Vincent, February 14, 1801. Graves, Royal Academy 2: 245–51. Sutton, The Daniells, 118–19. 27 Baker, Thomas Luny 1759–1837. 28 nmm, pae 9572–91, Thomas Luny. Sketchbook. 1763–72? 29 Graves, Royal Academy, 5: 116. 30 Baker, 7, referring to research by Robert Vigg. 31 Baker, 8. See nmm pae 9572–9905, Luny sketchbooks. 32 Thomas Luny, To the Right Honorable … Earl Howe … This representation of his Engagement with the French Fleet on the 1st of June 1794, at the time that two of the French Ships of the Line were sinking, and This representation of the British Fleet … Bringing into Spithead the Six French Ships captur’d on the First of June 1794, aquatints by Robert Pollard and J. Wells, and by Pollard and Birnie respectively, published separately by Pollard and by John Jeffryes, 1 November 1794, 459 x 695mm and 447 x 679mm, nmm pah 7872 and 7880. 33 nmm, pae 9572. 34 Toby Thorne, “A Diagnosis,” in Anon. Thomas Luny, Teignmouth Monograph. 35 Robert Dymond, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 18 (1886): 443. 36 Dymond, 18: 445–6.

420

N o t e s t o p a g e s 321–4

37 Malcolm Rae, “Thomas Luny, 1759–1837,” Thomas Luny, 1759–1837, Teignmouth’s Renowned Marine Painter, Monograph 1, Teignmouth Museum & Historical Society, 1999. 38 Baker, 14. 39 47.5⬙ x 72⬙, signed and dated 1820. Christie’s, 9 November 2000. 40 Rae, “Thomas Luny,” 8. 41 Graves, British Institution, 357, both 35⬙ x 47⬙. There is an attractive Luny, The Battle of Trafalgar, signed and dated 1826, frame 98 x 141cm, at the Royal Navy Museum, Portsmouth. Accession 1965/73. 42 The ship Castor and other vessels in a choppy sea, 34⬙ x 50⬙, nmm bhc 3251. 43 The wreck of the East Indiaman Dutton at Plymouth Sound, 26 January 1796, 30⬙ x 44⬙, nmm bhc 3298. 44 Also known as: The Brigantine Warren in a gale, 9⬙ x 12⬙, signed and dated 1828, nmm bhc 3708. 45 16⬙ x 20.5⬙, signed and dated 1828, nmm, bhc 0622. 46 Reinagle, Sketch of naval fighting vessels with detailed notes, possibly relating to the Battle of Navarino. graphite, 231 x 468mm, nmm paf 0149; Scipion, Dartmouth and Brisk at the Battle of Navarino, 20 Oct 1827, lithograph by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, 18 January 1828, 342 x 481mm, (plate no. 2 of 13), paf 4810 (with 4811–21); other copies, and smaller format copies. See Robert Edmund Graves, “George Philip Reinagle,” dnb, 1753; and Priscilla Napier, Black Charlie, 55–66. 47 Literary Gazette and Journal 24 June 1837, 403. 48 Dymond, 18: 444. 49 Old Men-of-War, Portsmouth Harbour, Birmingham Art Gallery. 50 nmm Stanfield ms/79/159; Haydon, 1 July 1841, 5: 66. 51 Lockett, Samuel Prout, 23. 52 See topographical pictures, and five sketch books. v&a, pd 29b. 53 Sails spread out to dry over beached fishing boat, graphite and brown.wash 108 x 164mm; Anchor resting on rowing boat, graphite 104 x 210mm; Two Sketches of Brigs, stern quarter view, graphite and wash 164 x 111mm; Study of square rigged sails, graphite 128 x 110mm; Sketches of various sailing vessels, dated July 1811, graphite 153 x 262mm; Sketch of rigging, graphite 135 x 250mm; Construction of a Naval Vessel, 193 x 285mm; nmm paf 7551–2, 7548–50, and 7523–4. 54 Ruskin, Harbours of England, 21. 55 Prison Hulk, Samuel Prout after W.H. Harriot (artist) and George Cooke (engraver), nmm paf 6122. 56 Farington, 2 April 1807, 8: 3001. See page 190.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 324–33

421

57 Farington, 4 July 1809, 10: 3504. 58 Pyne, Wine and Walnuts, 1: 295. 59 Dordrecht: the Dort packet-boat from Rotterdam becalmed, Paul Mellon collection, Upperville, Virginia. 60 Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1: 351. 61 Private Collection. See Archibald, plate 441. 62 Trafalgar … Neptune … Santissima Trinidad, lithograph by C.H. Seaforth, published 21 October 1842, nmm pag 9037. 63 C.F. Bell, “John Sell Cotman,” Walker’s Quarterly, nos. 19–20. 64 Holcomb and Ashcroft, John Sell Cotman in the Cholmeley Archive, 52–3. 65 Watercolour, 8½⬙ x 12¾⬙, City of Norwich Museum. 66 Hardie, Water-Colour Painting, 2: 87. 67 Cooke, Edward William, Fifty Plates of Shipping and Craft, London, 1829; and Shipping and Craft, 19 plates, London: J. and A. Arch. 1828–29. 68 Louise Hawes, “Turner’s Fighting Téméraire,” 25. 69 39.9 x 54.5cm, signed and dated 1831, v&a 3014–1876. See Laurence Binyon, “The Life and Work of John Sell Cotman.” 70 Kitson, Life, 328. 71 Kitson, Life, 332. 72 Signed but n.d., 336 x 465mm nmm pah 5249. 73 Huggins, Descripting Catalogue …, and The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, oil, 24⬙ x 33⬙ nmm bhc 0542. 74 Ruskin, Harbours of England, 16. 75 The Battle of Trafalgar, I, The Beginning of the Action: The Victory Breaking the Line, Royal Collection, No. 858, 246.4 x 304.8; II, The Close of the Action, No. 859, 243.8 x 314.9; III, The Storm after the Battle, No. 860, 248.9 x 314.9. 76 Aquatint engravings, Belleisle, 15 minutes past noon, October 21st 1805, and Belleisle, 4 h 15 m P.M. October 21st 1805, nmm pad 4054 (and 5707), and 5705. 77 nmm paf 6203. 78 He was christened Clarkson Frederick, but the Frederick disappeared, and unfortunately William, which was the name of a deceased brother, has all too frequently been added. 79 nmm Stanfield ms 79/159 box 2 ew ms 11–35. 80 pro adm 35/3615 #607, S.L.V.W. 29278 Prest. 81 nmm Stanfield NS 79/159 box 2 ew ms 11–35. 82 Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, 24 January 1813, Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others, R.W. Chapman, editor, 296. 83 nmm Stanfield ms 79/159 box 4; date uncertain. 84 Quoted in Pieter van der Merwe and Roger Took, The Spectacular

422

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97 98

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

N o t e s t o p a g e s 333–47

Career of Clarkson Stanfield, 14. See draft letter from Roderick Bland for the attention of Commissioner Lob, nmm Stanfield ms 79/159 box 4 n.d. Austen, Persuasion, 99. pro adm 37/5095. He was discharged 20 November 1814. nmm Stanfield ms 79/159 box 4. nmm Stanfield ms 79/159 box 4. Foote, A Companion to the Theatres, 74. MacGeorge, William Leighton Leitch: A Memoir, 46. Altick, The Shows of London, Shows of London, 200. nal, British Institution Minutes, rc15: f. 69v. In 1828 Stanfield exhibited Wreckers off Fort Rouge; Calais in the Distance 8⬘ x 10⬘, Graves, British Institution, 508–9. Redding, Fifty Years’ Recollections, 3: 274. Oil, 37⬙ x 60⬙, not signed or dated is no longer considered to be by Stanfield, nmm bhc 0544. Pointon, Bonington, Francia and Wyld, 110 no. 10. Peacock, Richard Parkes Bonington, plate 17. The Economics of Taste, 1 (1970): 93. John Watkins, Life and Career of George Chambers, London, 1841. See also Russett, Alan, George Chambers 1803–1840, His Life and Work, The Sailor’s Eye and the Artist’s Hand, 1996. Watkins, Chambers, 9. Watkins, Chambers, 12. Watkins, Chambers, 19–21. Cooper, My Life, 1: 222–4. Russett, George Chambers, 36–7, 43. Watkins, Chambers, 24–5. Altick, The Shows of London, Shows of London, 141–62. Watkins, Chambers, 32–3. Watkins, Chambers, 177. 182 x 289mm, nmm paf 5957. Russett, George Chambers, 183. See Sutton, The Daniells, 175. Russett, George Chambers, 87–96. Cooper, My Life, 1: 222–4. Watkins, Chambers, 63. Watkins, Chambers, 82, 85–65. Roget II, 234–7. Pencil sketch, Waterside scene at Chatham 11⬙ x 15⬙, nmm paf 5600, and The Launch of the Royal George 9⬙ x 16½⬙, not located. Watkins, Chambers, 36. 43⬙ x 60⬙, Graves, British Institution, 95. Watkins, Chambers, 37. Watkins, Chambers, 39–40.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 347–60

423

120 Printed by Graf and Soret, 1 Great Castle Street. bm 1858.10.9.350. Another version: To Rear Admiral Mundy C.B. this Print representing the Capture of the Fort & Vessels in the Spanish Harbour of Begu, by H.M. Ship Hydra, Capt G Mundy August 7th 1807, lithograph, 228 x 312mm, published 1833 by Ackermann & Co., nmm pai 6436. 121 Watkins, Chambers, 26. 122 Watkins, Chambers, 44. 123 Russett, Georges Chambers, 86–7. 124 Lo Studio, 23. 125 Prout to Stanfield, 7 March, 25 May 1838, nmm Stanfield ms 79/159 box 1, and 29 May 1838 in box 4. 126 Dickens to Stanfield, 2 January 1853, Paroissien, Selected Letters, 91–92. 127 Letter of 20 May, quoted in Jane R. Cohen, Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators, 185. 128 11¾⬙ x 16⬙, v&a fa45 and 49. 129 Hawes, “Turner’s Fighting Téméraire.” 130 Ruskin, Modern Painters, i 189. 131 Wilton, Turner and the Sublime, 102. 132 W.M. Thackeray, “Picture Gossip: In a Letter from Michael Angelo Titmarsh,” Fraser’s Magazine 31 (June 1845), 713–24, reprinted in Olmsted I 604. 133 Ruskin, Modern Painters, i 121–2; 353–4. 134 Ruskin, Modern Painters, iv 57n. 135 Ruskin, Harbours of England, 14–15. 136 bm 1906.8.24.536. 137 Oil, 22½⬙ x 30½⬙, signed and dated 1835, nmm bhc 3245 (on commercial loan); graphite sketch 267 x 362mm, nmm paf 5597. 138 See Frederick Locker-Lampson, My Confidences, 72 ff., and Pieter van der Merwe, “The Naval Gallery of 1824–1936 and the Greenwich Hospital art collection.” 139 Battle of La Hogue, 23 May 1692, 60⬙ x 84½⬙, signed and dated 1836, nmm bhc 0339. 140 Finished picture 69½⬙ x 99⬙, signed and dated 1836, nmm bhc 0617; Study (First thought) for the Bombardment of Algiers, 1816?, graphite and brown wash, 203 x 336mm, nmm paf 5973; Sketch of Algiers 6th August 1816, 236 x 313mm (signed), 5974; The Bombardment of Algiers, 226 x 302mm, 5985; and oil sketch The Bombardment of Algiers, 27 August 1816, 18½⬙ x 28⬙, nmm bhc 0615. 141 Quoted in Watkins, 112–13. 142 Watkins, 111–12. 143 The Literary Gazette 1837, 147. Graves, The British Institution. 144 The Capture of Puerto Bello, 21 November 1739, 26½⬙ x 40⬙, bhc 0355.

424

N o t e s t o p a g e s 360–72

145 Private Collection. Photographs in nmm. 146 13⬙ x 10⬙. 147 24½⬙ x 47½⬙, nmm bhc 0502, and photograph of a study, Russett, Georges Chambers, 134–140. 148 Roget, Old Watercolour Society, II 235. 149 Roget, ii 230. 150 Watkins, 155–6. 151 Watkins, 157, and 163–64. 152 The Literary Gazette, No. 1244, 21 November 1840, 755–6. 153 The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805: Death of Nelson, 29⬙ x 47½⬙, nmm bhc 0545. 154 Clarkson Stanfield, The Battle of Trafalgar and the Victory of Lord Nelson over the Combined French and Spanish Fleets, October 21 1805, Tate n00405. 155 bm 1856.5.10.11. 156 Watkins, 173–4. 157 The Breaking Up of the San Joseph, 218 x 322mm, nmm paf 6066. 158 Oil on panel, 18⬙ x 27½⬙, Guildhall Acquisition no. 734; 12½⬙ x 19.6⬙, v&a 681–1893. A watercolour sketch is at the National Maritime Museum nmm 22½⬙ x 30¾⬙, 565 x 780mm, pah 8042. 159 6 April 1853, nmm Stanfield ms 59/179 box 1. 160 17½⬙ x 23⬙, nmm bhc 3698. 161 Van der Merwe and Took, 163 no. 304. And Mary Miers, “The Convent, Gibraltar,” Country Life, February 2001. 162 Athenaeum, 1863. 163 The Times, 2 May 1863. 164 The Times, 3 February 1870. 165 See Nicolas’s account of Trafalgar, J. Allen, Memoir of Admiral Hargood, 1841, 278 ff. 166 Longest dimension 77cms, Guildhall Gallery, City of London. 167 The Athenaeum, 25 May 1867, #2065 694a. 168 The Times No. 22,358, 3 May 1856, 10a. 169 Ruskin, The Harbours of England, 1856, 29–30. 170 64.6 x 106.4cm, National Gallery of Victoria no. 312.11–1. 171 Allen, Hargood, 287. 172 The Times No. 24,548, 2 May 1863, p. 11c. Graves gives the exhibition number as 123. postscript 1 nmm, Stanfield ms 79/159 Box 2.

N o t e s t o p a g e s 372–3

425

appendix 1 Clerk, J., Esq. Fellow of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 4to. 10s.6d. Cadell 165. See review in The Naval Chronicle, 1: 32–42, 137–140 (1998 Consolidated Edition, 1: 302–07). 2 Eichenberg, Fritz, The Art of the Print, New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1976, 352–4. 3 Sutton, The Daniells, 88. 4 Eichenberg, 371–9 ff.

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B i b l i ography

manuscripts a d m i r a l t y l i b r a r y [at Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth] Instructions for the better Ordering of the Fleet, c. 1688. ms 195, Papers Relating to the Royal Naval Academy, 1729–1816. ms 336, Mark White his Manuscript, Navigation, Royal [Naval] Academy [Portsmouth], 1752 bodleian ms English Misc. D. 572; Hartley, 14 February 1789. b r i t i s h l i b r a ry Add. ms. 33,394–33,407: Thomas Dodd’s “Memorials of Engravers” 1550 to 1800; Add. ms. 35,200: Earl Spencer Papers; Add. ms. 36,498: Cumberland Papers; Add. ms. 36,594: John Singleton Copley correspondence; Add. ms. 41,644, 41,646: Anderson sketchbook; Add. ms. 70,955: View of Toulon Harbour, possibly by J.T. Serres, c. 1796. Add. ms. 75,844: St Vincent-Spencer correspondence. Maps, K. Top.18.76.d.f.: View of Liverpool, by J.T. Serres, 1797 bristol record office Nicholas Pocock. Illustrated log book of voyages between Bristol and Dominica. corporation of london record office Common Council Journal, Vol. 78.

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images Some of the paintings of naval victory are hidden away in private homes, and some dispersed through art sales to galleries outside of London where most of them were painted. But by far the larger part of the paintings recording the naval events of the years 1793 to 1815 are to be found in the galleries and museums in London, and the largest collection is that in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Unfortunately, only a very small proportion of them can be viewed in the public galleries. Some of the pictures that are in storage have been illustrated in this volume. Reproductions of many of the others can be viewed by looking at the on-line catalogues in web pages mounted by the galleries. No catalogue is provided on line by the Norwich Castle Gallery, or by the Yale Center for British Art. Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton:

City of London, Guildhall Gallery: Dulwich Picture Gallery: Mitchell Library, New South Wales: National Archives of Canada Documentary Art Division:

National Galleries of Scotland: National Gallery: National Gallery of Arts, Washington: National Gallery of Canada, Cybergallery: National Maritime Museum: National Portrait Gallery: Norwich Castle Gallery:

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Index

Abercrombie, Gen Sir Ralph, 151–2. Academy of Arts, Carlisle, 36. Académie Royale, 43. Acadian Recorder, 216. Ackermann, Rudolph, 99, 168, 204, 214, 219, 314, 338, 363, 373. Adam, Robert, 39–40. Adam and Eve, pub, 40. Adams, Am. John, 67. Adams, Boson’s Mate John (Wilkinson), 100. Adelaide, Queen, 23, 336, 346, 348. Addington, Henry, 154. Addison, Joseph, 10. Admiralty, 6, 9, 20, 30, 33–4, 39, 42, 58, 81, 93, 148, 158, 161, 165, 182, 190, 196, 201, 211, 219, 225–7, 230–3, 235, 237, 248–9, 253, 310, 345, 373. Admiralty House, Malta, 364. Algeciras, Battle of, 148–9. Alexandria, 129, 133, 151. Albion Mills, 87. Allen, Thomas, 100. Allen, William, 106; Nile, 106. Altiere, Prince, 3. Amiens, Peace of, 20, 98, 154, 173, 251, 277, 316.

Anderson, William, 96–7, 135, 147, 185, 309, 363; British Squadron … Tagus, 135; Calder’s Action, 185; Capture of Fort Louis, 96–7; Landing Party, 96–7; Lord Howe’s Fleet off Spithead, 135, 309; Nile, 135; Troops Embarking, 96; off Cape St. Vincent, 135; Wolverine, 148. Anderson, William Guido, 147. Anderson, Capt, 214. André, Philip, 99, 373. Andrew, George, 210. Andrew, John William, 214. Angelo, Henry, 7, 25, 43, 49, 55, 76, 166. Angerstein, John Julius, 23. Anson, Adm Lord George, 13. Anspach, Margrave of, 184. Anthony Roll, 6. Apsley House, 106. Armstrong, W.A., 214. Army of England, 128–9, 159. Arnald, George, 141–5, 312; Nile, 145, 312; portrait, 142. Art Journal, 138, 246. Art Union, 255, 306. Artist, The, 25. Ashford, William, 236. Athenaeum, 366–7. Atkins, Samuel, 220–1; Under

452

Repair, 220–1; Frigate Action, 220. Atkinson, John Augustus, 218–9. Austen, Jane, 7, 332–4. Austen, John, 332. Ayton, Richard, 313. Baily, J., 210. Ball, Capt Sir Alexander, 133, 151. Ballisat, G., 215. Ballynahinch, Battle of, 150. Bampfylde, Coplestone Warre, 80. Bank of England, 36, 226. Banks, Sir Joseph, 34, 161, 227, 236, 245, 247–8. Banks, Thomas, 17; portrait, 17. Barfleur, Battle of, 41. Barham, Adm Lord, 30. Barring, Sir Thomas, 367. Barker, Henry Aston, 87–8, 136–8, 146, 204, 206–7; and Bligh, 146–7; Flushing, 204, 206–7; and Nelson, 137–8, 146. Barker, Hariett Maria (née Bligh), 147. Barker, Robert, 43, 86, 136, 284; Nile, 136. Barker, Thomas Edward, 89. Barker, William Bligh, 147. Barlow, R-Adm Sir Robert, 81, 88. Barlow, Dr, 76. Barrack, 216–7. Barrymore, William, 334. Beatson’s Breakers Yard, 305. Beaumont, Sir George, 23, 86, 186, 248, 278, 285; and Constable, 186; and Farington, 86, 248; and Turner, 278, 285. Becher, Adm A.H., 252. Beckford, William, 4. Bedford, Duke of, 39. Beechey, Sir William, 17, 73, 191, 228, 236, 245; portrait, 17. Bennett, W., 255.

Index

Berthier, Gen, 3. Bestland, Charles, 17. Bevan, Lt Roland, 83. Bexley, Lord, 310. Bicknell, Charles, 190. Bitton House, 321. Black X Line, 306. Blackwood, V–Adm the Hon Sir Henry, 167. Blake, William, 344. Bland, Roderick/Paterick, see Stanfield, Clarkson. Blanquet, Adm, 124, 129. Blenheim Palace, 14. Bligh, Adm William, 98, 146–7. Board of Works, 59. Bonington (or Bonnington), Richard Parks, 190, 350, 336–7; Cutter and other Shipping, 337. Booth, Sophia, 272. Bougard, Le Sieur, 232. Bourgeois, Sir Peter Francis, 62–3, 236. Bowyer, Robert, 46, 58–9, 71, 92, 134. Boyle, Adm Charles, 193. Braithwaite, Capt, 338. Brenton, Capt Edward Pelham, 147. Brenton, V-Adm Sir Jahleel, 9, 104, 147–50, 210, 358; Algeciras, 149; Cape St. Vincent, 148; Spartan, 210. Brest, 28, 42, 51–2, 67, 86, 109, 132, 154, 196, 230–1. Bridgewater, Duke of, 278. Bridport, Adm Sir Alexander Arthur Hood, Visc, 259. Briggs, Henry Perronet, 312. Bright, Richard, 263. Brine, Capt, 321. Britannia, 173. Britannia Triumphant, 173, 182. British Institution for the Encouragement of British Artists, 24–5,

Index

74, 105, 125, 140–1, 179, 184, 190, 200, 224, 240–2, 244, 250, 257, 284–5, 309–10, 312, 314, 322–3, 330, 335, 340, 343, 346, 359. British Library, 135, 154, 230, 256. British Magazine, 13, 48, 58, 124–5, 137. British Museum, 16, 39, 55, 160, 177, 185, 222, 227, 256. Broke, R-Adm Sir Philip Bowes Vere, 213, 250, 256. Bromley, William, 177. Brookings, Charles, 228. Brothers, Richard, 48. Brown, Maj Gen John, 152–3, 158 Brown, Mather, 14, 43, 67–72, 91, 94, 107, 139–41, 176–7, 192, 199, 369; Lord Howe, 14, 69–72; Lord Nelson’s Victory off Trafalgar, 176–7; Nile, 139–41; and West, 67–9. Brown, publisher, 211. Brydon, John, 131. Buckingham House, 71, 124. Bulwer, Revd James, 326. Buonaparte, Emp Napoleon, 20, 37, 99, 143, 156, 165, 173, 193–6, 198–9, 212, 214, 221–3, 237, 249, 297, 322, 327, 331, 337; First Consul, 143. Bunker Hill, Battle of, 67. Burke, Edmund, 12. Burr, J., 215. Buttersworth, James Edward, 309–10. Buttersworth, Thomas, 8, 104–5, 132–3, 146, 154, 162, 184–5, 201, 214–15, 309–10; Admiral Gambier’s Action, 201; Shannon & Chesapeake, 214; Copenhagen, 146, 154; Cape St. Vincent, 154; Dance, 162; Endymion & President, 214–15;

453

Guillaume Tell, 133; Nile, 132, 154; Russian Line of Battle Ships, 132–3; Ships captured by Nelson, 154; Trafalgar, 184–5; Ville de Paris, 105; Yacht “Harriet,” 105. Buttersworth, Thomas Jr, 309–10. Byles, Mather III, 139. Byles, Revd Dr Mather, 67, 167. Byrne, J., 249. Cadell, J., 34, 109. Cagliostro, Count, 46. Caird Library, 256. Calcutta, 159, 329. Caldecot, see Serres, Mrs Sr and John Thomas. Calder, Adm Sir Robert, 102–3, 166, 185. Callcott, Augustus Wall, 12, 272, 324, 343, 361; Pool of London, 324–5. Callcott, John, 272. Callcott, Maria (née Graham), 324. Camden, Earl of, 158, 161–2, 247. Campbell, Thomas, 305. Campbell, Capt C., 214. “Campus Nautica,” 91. Camperdown, Battle of, 114–15; and see pictures by: de Loutherbourg, 115–18; Copley, 118–25; Fittler, 118; D. Orme, 126–7; Wells, 127, Whitcombe, 126. Canaletto, 348. Cape St Vincent, Battle of, 102–3; and see pictures by: Allen, 106; de Loutherbourg, 106; Pocock, 105. Capel, R-Adm the Honourable Thomas, 345. Capes, Mrs, 321. Carey, William Paulet, 25. Carleton House, 39. Carmelites, 138. Caroline, Princess, 241.

454

Casanova, Francesco Giuseppe, 43. Catherine, Czarina, 219. Cavendish, William, Duke of Devonshire, 166. Chalon, Henry Bernard, 157. Chambers, George, 5, 6, 9, 27–8, 40, 192, 329, 337–50, 355–62, 369; Bombardment of Algiers, 357–8; Britannia, 355, 359; and Callcott, 343; Camperdown, 360; Colosseum 340; and Cooper, 343; Cormorant, 346; and Daniell, 343; Fresh Breeze, 346; Frigate Firing, 342; & GoodenChisholm, 344; Hydra, 346–8; Lord Howe’s Victory, 342; patrons, 339–43, 345–8, 356; and Pyne, 343; Royal George, 345, 355; Situation of the Victory, 360; and Stanfield, 335, 348, 350; Terror, 360; Trafalgar, 363; Victory Breaking the Line, 360; and Whitcombe, 343. Chambers, George William Crawford, 341. Chambers, Mary Anne, 341–2, 349, 361–2. Chambers, William Henry Martin, 349. Champion, Richard, 78–9. Champion, Sarah, 78. Channel Fleet, 42, 50, 81, 196–7, 231. Charles II, 7. Charles IV, 102. Charlie, “Bonnie Prince,” 112. Chatham, Earl of, 9, 120, 178, 198. Chelsea Water Company, 40. Cholmele, Francis, 205, 326. Christie’s Auction Gallery, 16, 239. Clarence, Duke of, 5–6, 67, 72, 103, 229, 232, 243, 302, 333. Clark, John Heaviside, 212–3.

Index

Clark, William, 37. Clarke, Revd James Stanier, 83, 100, 171, 185, 212, 259. Clarke, Richard, 119. Clarkson, Revd Thomas, Observations on a Guinea Voyage, 331; and Stanfield, 331. Cleveley, James, 227. Cleveley, John Jr, 226–7. Cleveley, John Sr, 8, Queen Charlotte coming to England, Cleveley, Robert, 8, 43, 72–5, 91, 95, 133–4, 228, 356; Augusta Yacht, going to Hanover, 73; Nelson Boarding, 106; Nile, 133; and Phillips, 72; and de Poggi, 74; portrait, 73; Reception on Board the Barfleur, 73; and Rigaud, 95; Royal Visit to Spithead, 74–5; and Serres, 227; Trafalgar, 185; Victory of the British Fleet, 73; Voyage of Governor Phillip, 72. Clowes, Laird, 96. Cobbett, William, 156. Cockburn, Sir George, 202–3. Cockburn, James Pattison, 28, 201–4. Cochrane, Adm the Hon Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, 81, 98, 196–7. Cole, Capt Sir Christopher, 211. Cole, 317. College of Naval Architects, 253. Collingwood, V-Adm Cuthbert Lord, 103, 166, 224, 314. Colosseum, 340. Collyer, Joseph, 174. Combe, William, 35, 37, 219, 242. Committee of Public Safety, 42, 51. Committee of Taste, 171, 224. Commons, House of, 12, 40. Constable, John, 4, 18, 23, 30, 86, 186–90, 200, 268, 278, 313; and

Index

Barker, 86; and Beaumont, 23, 187, 278–9; and Bonnington, 190, 337; and Callcott, 324; Victory, 186, 188; and Leslie, 187; self-portrait, 188. Constable, Maria (née Bicknell), 190. Cook, Lt James, 20, 34, 46, 225, 227, 258. Cooke, Edward William, 220, 328, 335–6, 352, 369; Fifty Plates of Shipping and Craft, 328, 352, 369; Portsmouth Harbour, 352. Cooke, George, 220, 324, 328. Cooke, John, 33. Cooper, Thomas Sydney, 275, 343. Copenhagen, battles of, 4, 143–7, 195, 198, 201, 203–4; and see pictures by: H.A. Barker, 146; Buttersworth, 201; Cockburn, 201; T. Dighton, 146; Dodd, 145, 147; Gillray, 198; Kittoe, 145; Livesay, 203; Pocock, 145, 203; Ramage, 146; Schetky, 203; Thompson, 146; Turner, 203; Whitcombe, 146. Copley, John Singleton, 14, 25, 67–9, 118–25, 138, 143, 177, 192, 199, 369; and Brown, 67–9; Death of … Chatham, 120; Death of Nelson, 177; and Drummond, 311–12; Gibraltar, 25, 119; Major Peirson, 69, 120; Nile, 138; portrait, 17, 121; and Turner, 287; Victory of Lord Duncan, 120–25; Watson, 119–20; and West, 119, 173. Copley, Sukey, 119. Copley Fielding, see Fielding. Coram’s Hospital, 16. de Cordôva, Admiral Don José, 102. Core’s Lyceum, 215. Cornwallis, Adm the Hon Sir William, 136.

455

Cotes, Francis, 102. Cotman, Ann (née Miles), 205, 327. Cotman, John Sell, 12, 23, 27, 31, 204–5, 208, 326–9, 335, 343; and Cholmele, 205, 326; and E. Cooke, 327; Dismasted Brig, 208, 328–9; and Girtin, 204; Greta Bridge, 205; Mars, 205, 208; Mouth of the Thames, 328; and Opie, 204; Needles, 326; patrons, 27, 205, 326; portrait, 208; Rouen Cathedral, 327; and Stanfield, 335; and D. Turner, 205, 326–7; and Varley, 205, 327; yachtsman, 326–8. Cotman, Miles, 31, 326, 327, 343; and Chambers, 343. Courtauld Gallery, 16. Crawford, Christopher, 339–43, 349, 362–3. Crawford, John, 123, 126. Cresse, 57. Cristall, Joshua, 9. Crown & Anchor Tavern, 292. Cruikshank, Frederick, 100. Cruikshank, George, 212, 372. Cruikshank, Isaac, 43, 51–2, 127, 212; How a Great Admiral, 51–2. Cumberland, “Princess” Olive of, 220. Cunningham, R-Adm Sir Charles, 231. Curtis, Adm Sir Roger, 112, 197, 229, 262. Dalhousie, Maj Ramsay, 9th Earl of, 150–2, 214, 216–18. Dalhousie Castle, 151. Dalrymple, Alexander, 33. Dalrymple, Sir John, 110. Dalrymple, Gen Sir John, 196. Damer, Anne, 10. Danby, Hannah, 275.

456

Danby, John, 272. Danby, Sarah, 272. Dance, Comdr Nathaniel, 159, 161–3, 246–7, 314. Dance, George, 17, 161; portrait, 17. Dance-Holland, Sir George Nathaniel, 161, 174. Daniell, Mary (née Westall), 161–2, 245. Daniell, Samuel, 314. Daniell, Thomas, 31, 34, 159–60, 168, 313, 372. Daniell, William, 4, 27, 31, 34, 159–63, 168, 191–2, 211, 245, 248, 313, 363, 372; Argus, 214; Banda Neira, 211; Cape St. Vincent, 314; Dance & the Comte de Linois, 162; Dreadnaught, 164; Fleet … Command of Sir Nathaniel Dance, 162; First Rater going down Channel, 314; Fleet of Ships at St. Helena, 161; Homeward Bound, China Fleet, 163; Indiaman in a Gale, 314; Indiaman in a North-Wester, 314; Kent … on fire, 314; Man Overboard, 314–5; Mast House in Blackwall, 163; Navarino, 314; Passing Beachy Head, 160; Picturesque Voyage, 34, 160, 164; Quarterdeck of an Indiaman, 164; Ship on her beam ends, 314; Trafalgar, 314; and Turner, 283; View of the Frigates Stationed in The Hope, 164; View of Plymouth Dock, 164; Voyage round Great Britain, 313; Wreck of the Clarence, 343; Wreck of an Indiaman, 343. Davis, W, 34, 109. Davison, Alexander, 133, 223. Dayes, Edward, Professional Sketches, 18, 48, 55, 59, 97, 108, 226, 271.

Index

De Loutherbourg, Philip, 8–9, 14–15, 26–7, 31, 40, 43–9, 55–67, 69, 71, 115–17, 125, 152–4, 184, 198–9, 225, 241, 287, 298, 309, 369; Admiral Duncan’s Victory, 115–17, 125, 139; Chevrette, 154; death, 309; Edophusikon, 44–6; Gainsborough portrait, 43; and Garrick, 43; and Gillray, 49, 55; Glorious First, 55–67, 69, 71, 74, 91, 94, 298, 301, 303, 357; Landing … Egypt, 152–3; and Landseer, 287; and mesmerism, 46–8; Nile, 115, 130, 138–40; residence, 40, 184; self-portrait, 57; Surrender of the Spanish Admiral, 105; Trafalgar, 184; and the theatre, 26–7, 44–6, 136, 225, 241; Valenciennes, 49. De Loutherbourg, Mrs, 184, 291. d’Orléans, Duc, 23. Debrett, J., 232. Delacroix, Eugène, 268, 336. De Maria, James, 280, 300. Devis, Arthur William, 176–7, 227; Death of Nelson, 176–7, 190, 227, 310, 357. “Devon,” 321. Devonport yard, 8, 38, 101, 164, 220, 303, 335, 351. Dibdin, Charles, 136. Dickens, Charles, 27, 35, 150, 307, 350–1, 364, Little Dorrit, 35, 351. Dictionary of National Biography, 107, 251. Djezzar Pacha, 142. Dr Syntax …, 219–20. Dodd, Robert, 43, 89, 91, 127, 146; Camperdown, 127; Copenhagen, 146–7; Spithead, 91; Vengeur, 91, 342. Dodson, Campbell, 107. Donaldson, James H., 216.

Index

Douglas, Capt Sir Andrew Snape, 70–1. Douglas, Sir Howard, 152, 217. Dove, Thomas, 349. Downman, Capt. Hugh, 4. Drinkwater–Bethune, Col John, 103. Drummond, Samuel, 15, 111–13, 178–9, 182–3, 191, 310–12; Admiral Duncan, 311–12; Death of Nelson, 178–9, 182, 191, 310–11; Drowned Sailor, 112; Parker, 111, 113; portrait, 113; Shipwrecked Sailors Relating Their Misfortunes, 112; Shipwrecked Sailor Rescued, 112; Windsor Castle packet, 182–3. Drury, Capt William, 115. Drury Lane Theatre, 43, 45–6, 53, 335–6. Duckworth, Adm Sir John Thomas, 138, 193–4, 201–2. Dulwich Picture Gallery, 292. Duncan, Adm Adam Lord, 110, 112, 114–15, 117–8, 120–7, 130, 138, 140, 310–12, 360. Duncan, Bertha (née Huggins), 330. Duncan, Edward, 330, 343. Duncan, Lady Mary, 125. Duncan, Thomas, 306. Dundee, 125. Dundonald, Earl of, see Thomas Cochrane. Dunthorn, 86, 187, 189. Dymond, Robert, 320–1. East India Company, 5, 18, 33, 119, 139, 158–9, 227, 315–6, 329. East India dock, 38. East London Theatre, 334. East Suffolk Hospital, 213. Ecole des Beaux Arts, 337. Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 301.

457

Edinburgh Society of Artists, 214–5. Edwards, Edward, Anecdotes of Painters, 21, 225, 228, 273. Edwards, R-Adm Edward, 102. Egremont, Earl of, 279, 291–2, 305. Elgin, Lady, 27. Elgin, Lord, 16, 27. Elliot, Gen, 119. Elsinborg Castle, 203. Engraving, 32–3, 371–3. Epping Place Society, 250. Essex, Earl of, 292. Etching, 371–2. Etty, William, 335, 364. Evans, Dorinda, 139. Examiner, 176, 178, 224, 285, 295, 309, 310. Exeter City Museum, 322. Exmouth, Sir Edward Pellew, Visc, 101, 241, 321–2, 335. Exoticism, 6. Faden, W, 203. Fagan, Robert, 3–4. Fairburn, John, 203. Falconer, William, 199, 342. Farington, George, 35. Farington, Joseph, 17–18, 20, 22, 28, 31, 33, 35–6, 50, 52–4, 62–3, 66, 68, 71, 73, 81, 85, 87, 92–3, 95, 98, 104, 114–15, 123, 134, 153, 156–8, 161–2, 166–8, 170–1, 173–5, 177, 184–5, 187, 190, 194, 196, 198–200, 213, 222, 226, 229–30, 235–6, 240–1, 245–9, 271, 274–5, 278, 283, 285, 291, 293, 296, 302, 309, 324; and Barker, 85, 87; and Beaumont, 285; and Brown, 68; and Boydell, 36; Chatham Dockyard, 50–1; and Cleveley, 186; and Constable, 187, 190; and

458

Copley, 123, 177; and Daniell, 161–2, 283; death, 302, 309; and de Loutherbourg, 62–3, 66, 153, 184, 291; and de Poggi, 73; Deptford Dockyard, 50; and Downman, 115; and Emma Hamilton, 199; and Glorious First of June, 52–4, 71, 93; Greenwich from Deptford Yard, 38; and Hearne, 296, 324; and Heath, 175; and Hodges, 22, 226; and Lane, 213; and Lawrence, 196; Paris, 156; and Pocock, 81, 200; portrait, 17; and Rigaud, 95; and Royal Academy, 17–18; and P. Sandby, 134; and Serres, 229–30, 235–6, 240–1; and Smirke, 31, 92; Trafalgar, 162, 167–8; and Trumbull, 98; Turner, 271, 274–5, 278, 283, 285; Valenciennes, 50; and Wells, 240; and West, 20, 28, 156, 158, 170–1, 173–5, 278, 293; and R. Westall, 222, 245, 248; and W. Westall, 245–8; and William F., 162, 249. Farington, Susan, 123. Farington, William, 162. Farnborough, see Long. Fawkes, Edith Mary, 297. Fawkes, Hawksworth, 297–8. Fawkes, Col Walter, 135, 292–3, 298–9, 305. Fearney, William, 103. Field, George, 236, 240–1. Fielding, Antony Vandyke Copley, 23, 325; Bridlington Harbour, Fishing Smacks: Storm Coming On, 325. Fielding, Susanne Copley (née Gisborne), 325. Fielding, Theodore Nathan, 325. Fine Art Society, 32. Fittler, James, 58, 104, 115, 118,

Index

139, 154, 200; Camperdown, 115, 118; Commodore Nelson boarding, 104; Nelson’s Flagships, 200; Nile, 139. Flaxman, John, 171, 173. Fleet Review, 75, 127, 130, 156, 255, 297. Flinders, Matthew, 161–2, 245–6, 248–9; Voyage to Terra Australis, 249. Foote, Horace, Companion to the Theatres, 334. Forster, George, 225, 258. Forster, Johann Reinhold, 258; Observations … Round the World, 258. Forster, John, 351. Fox, Charles James, 101. Francia, François Louis Thomas, 336. Francis, Sir Peter, 62. Franklin, Benjamin, 67. Fraser, Alexander, Nile, 191. Free Society of Artists, 226, 315. Freeman, Samuel, 73. Friedland, Battle of, 195. Fulton, Robert, 28. Furneaux, Tobias, 46. Fuseli, Henry, 36, 95, 273, 278. Gainsborough, Thomas, 43, 45. de Galles, Admiral Morard, 109. Gambier, Adm of the Fleet Sir James, Lord, 82, 196, 201. Gardner, V-Adm Sir Allen, 53, 73, 92, 96, 100, 101, 110, 114, 230. Garneray, Ambrose Louis, 220. Garrick, David, 43, 46. Gazette, 4, 166. Gellée, Claude (known as Claude Lorraine), 282, 365; Hagar & the Angel 23; Landing of Aeneas, 3; Sacrifice of Apollo 3. George I, 39, 59, 73, 222, 244,

Index

254–5, 298, 357. George III, 6, 16, 20, 42, 75, 88, 95, 107, 157, 228, 243, 312. George, Dorothy, 165. Géricault, Jean Louis André, Raft of the Medusa, 303. Gillray, James, 22, 43, 48–50, 55, 76, 110, 143, 165, 198, 212, 372; Blessings of Peace and the Curses of War, 22; British Tars, towing, 198; Consequences of … French Invasion, 110; and de Loutherbourg, 48–50, 55; Buonaparte, hearing of Nelson’s Victory, 143; St. George and the Dragon, 165. Gilman, 224. Gilpin, Revd William, 12–13, 22, 80, 86, 219, 263. Girtin, Thomas, 11, 22, 27, 204, 270–1, 273, 310, 324. Girtin’s Sketching Club, 11, 22, 324. Glorious First of June, Battle of: 14, 42, and see pictures by: R. Barker, 86–8, 90; M. Brown, 67–72; Cleveley, 72–5; de Loutherbourg, 46–67; de Poggi, 73–5; Dodd, 89–91; Livesay, 91; Pocock, 78–86; Rowlandson, 76–8; Smirke, 92–3. Glossop, Joseph, 241, 334. Gloucester, Prince William of, 22, 232. Gompert, J., 321. Gooden-Chisholm, James Chisholm, 345, 361; Thames and Medway Admiralty Surveys, 345. Government House, 218. Goya, Francisco, Disasters of War, Dos de Mayo, 290–1. Graves, Robert Edmund, 251. Graves, Adm Sir Thomas, 85, 146, 239.

459

Green, Rupert, 48–9, 58. Green, Valentine, 48, 58, 66. Greenland Dock, 38. Greenwich Naval Hospital, see Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich. Grey, Lt-Gen Sir Charles, 96. Grignion, Charles, 3–4. Guards, 152. Guardship, 292–3, 228, 332–3, 337. Guildhall, 224, Guildhall gallery, 364. Hadley’s sextant, 232. Haines, W., 213. Half-Way House, 91, 342. Hall, Charles, 102. Hall, John, 244. Hamilton, Emma, 3–5, 137, 141, 199. Hamilton, Sir William, 3, 45, 137–8, 169. Hammond, Graham Eden, 71. Harcourt, Lord, 88. Hardcastle, Ephraim, see William Henry Pyne. Hardie, Martin, 327–8. Hardwick, Thomas, 270. Hardy, Adm Sir Charles, 4. Hardy, V-Adm Sir Thomas Masterman, 167, 174, 176, 187, 285, 302–3. Harlow, Henry, 77. Harriott, W.H., 220. Hastings, Warren, 225. Hartley, Mary, 80, 263. Harvard University, 67. Harvey, Adm Eliab, 187. Havell, Daniel, 251. Havell, Robert, 251. Hawke, Adm Edward Lord, 102, 228. Haydon, Fanny, 129.

460

Haydon, Franz Joseph, 129 Haydon, Robert, 19, 21, 34, 39, 129, 168, 182, 184, 197, 212, 222, 224, 264, 284, 310–11, 323; portrait, 21. Hearne, Thomas, 86, 296, 324. Heath, Charles, 171. Heath, James, 123, 125, 170, 173–6, 191; Death of Nelson, 170–6; portrait, 170; and West, 170–6. Hellyer, J., 131. Hellyer, Thomas, 186. Henry VIII, 6. Henry, Fort, 217–8. Henslow, Sir John, 50. Hill, 219. Hind, Arthur M., 76. Historic Gallery, 46, 58–9, 71, 92, 134. Hoare, Prince, 25. Hoche, Gen, 109, 115. Hodges, Mrs (née Carr), 225. Hodges, William, 17, 20–2, 225–6, 248, 258; and Admiralty, 20, 225–6, 248; didactic landscape, 20–1; Effects of Peace and The Consequences of War, 20; and Farington, 22, 226, 258; portrait, 17; Travels in India, 226. Hogarth, William, 12, 16, 91. Holcroft, Thomas, 49, 112, 129, 228. Holman, Francis, 315. Holmes, Sir Charles, 190. Homer, 264, 287. Hood, V-Adm Sir Samuel, 106, 136. Hood, Adm Visc Samuel, 81, 99, 100. Hood, publisher, 216. Hoppner, John, 17, 124, 157, 168, 324; portrait, 17. Horner, Thomas, 340.

Index

Horwood, Richard, 38. Hotham, Adm William, 100, 102. Houghton Hall, 35. Howe, Adm Earl Richard, 14–5, 50–4, 59, 69–71, 75–6, 82–4, 110, 114, 173, 224, 230, 312. Hubert, 149. Huggins, William John, 329–31, 334, 339; American Brig chased, 329; Indefatigable and Amazon, 329; Trafalgar, 329–31. Hunt, Robert, 176, 178, 224, 285, 295, 309, 310. Hurst, Robinson, 211, 315. Hutchinson, P.O., 320. Huxley, Aldous, 34. Hydrographic Office, 33. India Captain’s Club, 162. Inman, Revd James, 30. Jacobins, 110. James II, 14. James, Adm William, Naval History of Great Britain, 59, 71, 110, 298. Jay, John, 98. Jeakes, J., 215. Jefferson, Thomas, 67. Jeffreys, John, 101. Jenkins, James, 203, 257. Jerrold, Douglas, 333. Jervis, Adm Sir John, see St Vincent. Johnson, I., 106. Jukes, F., 227. Junot, Marshal, 195. Kallerman, Gen, 196. Kauffman, Angelica, 10. Keith, Adm Sir George Keith Elphinstone Keith, Visc, 132, 142, 151. Kemble, John, 81. Kemble, Maria, 81. Kemble, Lt William Gage, 83.

Index

Kempt, Sir James, 217. Ketton-Cremer, RW, 205. Kenwood House, 46. Kerr, R-Adm Mark, 346–9. King George’s Sound, 246. Kingsley, Revd, 281. King’s Bench Prison, 35, 40, 219, 233, 235–7, 245. King’s College London, 218, 328, 343. Kingston dockyard, 217–8. Knight, Ellis Cornelia, 229. Kitson, Sydney, 205. Kittoe, Robinson, 146. Knights of St John, 129. Koster, Simon de, 155. Kronborg Castle, 146, 203. Landseer, John, 26, 41, 134, 287, 293–6. Lane, Samuel, 213–14. Landsdown, Lord, 335. Larkin, Capt William, 205. Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 17, 20, 158, 196, 200, 298, 356; and Pocock, 200; portrait, 17; and Turner, 298. Le Blon, Jacob Christophe, 372. Le Brun, Charles, 14. Lee, John Theophilus, 250. Leicester, John, Lord de Tabley, 140, 279, 292, 302. Leitch, William Leighton, 334. Lemon, H, 127. Leslie, Charles Robert, 187, 268. Leslie, Robert, 268, 271, 306–7. Leviathan, 198, 360. Library of the Fine Arts, 304. Linois, R-Adm Charles, 159, 161–2. Literary Gazette, 314, 359, 362. Little, John, 121–3. Little, Samuel, 121. Little Bell Alley, 232.

461

Livesay, John, 91. Livesay, Richard, 30, 43, 91, 203. Lob, Commissioner, 333. Locker, Edward Hawke, 356–8, 360, 362; and Chambers, 358, 360, 362. Locker, Capt William, 72, 107–8, 356; and Cleveley, 72; and Nelson, 72, 107–8. London dock, 38. Long, Sir Charles, Lord Farnborough, 310, 356. Longman, 211. Lonsdale, James, 170. Lonsdale, Earl of, 292. Louis XVIII, 303. Louis Philippe, 255. Love, Horatio Beevor, 208. Luffman, John, 232; Pocket Chronologist, 232; Selected Plans of the Principal Cities, 232. Luny, Thomas,5, 8, 28, 314–23; Brig Warren, 322; Castor, 322; Dutton, 322; Glorious First, 321; Nile, 316, 318–19; patrons, 321; self-portrait, 316; and Tobin, 321. M’Arthur, John, 100, 171, 185, 212. Macklin, Thomas, 46, 67. Maclise, Daniel, 351. McQuin, Abbé Ange Denis, 168. Macready, William, 350. Mahan, Adm Alfred Thayer, 5. Maitland, R-Adm Sir Frederick Lewis, 222–3. Malton, Thomas, 270, 275. Maples, Cmdr J.F., 214. Marchant, Nathaniel, 25. Marengo, Battle of, 4. Maria Christina, Queen of Naples, 102. Marine de la République Française, 42, 51, 157.

462

Maritime School, Chelsea, 30, 228, 234. Marlborough, Duke of, 14, 126, Marlborough House, 364. Marryat, Capt Frederick, 350. Marsden, William, 33. Marshalsea Prison, 18, 35, 40. Mary, Queen, 41. Masquerier, John James, 156–7. Masséna, Marshal, 210. Mechel, Charles de, 48. Mediterranean fleet, 3, 99–102, 128, 165, 185, 194. Medland, Thomas, 73. Mellon, Paul, 89, 233. Melville, Henry Dundas, 1st Visc, 165, 194. Merle, Mr, 315, 317. Mesmer, Frederick Anton, 46. Middleman, Samuel, 249. Middleton, Sir George Broke, 256. Military Corps of Artists, 157–8. Miller, Capt Ralph Willet, 104, 131; Commodore Nelson Boarding, 104. Miller, William, 363. Minto, Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of, 166. Missionary Society, 135. Mitchell, Robert, 87, 89. Mitchell Library, 225. Molloy, Capt Anthony James Pye, 54. Monro, Dr Thomas, 104, 271, 324, 336. Moorsom, Capt Robert, 167. Morgan, Capt, 307. Morning Chronicle, 120, 137. Morse, Gen, 159. Moser, Joseph, 48. Mulgrave, Lord, 33. Mundy, R-Adm Sir George, 346–7, 359. Mutiny, 36, 39, 110–12, 114, 127.

Index

Napier, Adm Sir Charles, 323. Napoleon, see Buonaparte. Nash, John, 39–40, 219, 340. Nasmyth, Alexander, 151, 215, 251, 335. Nasmyth, Patrick, 215, 335. National Archives of Canada, 217. National Convention, 42. National Gallery, 16, 24, 41, 278. National Gallery of Canada, 68, 151, 293. National Galleries of Scotland, 125. National Gallery of Marine Painting, 41, 303. National Maritime Museum, 67, 80, 82, 98, 104–6, 126, 132–5, 141, 146, 148–9, 163, 179, 184–5, 201, 203, 210, 212, 218–20, 230, 246, 250, 252–3, 256, 317, 322–3, 330, 332, 359, 364. National Portrait Exhibition, 111–13. Naumachia, 89, 136–7. Naval Anecdotes, 304. Naval Chronicle, 15, 38, 83, 86, 101, 154, 221, 232, 259, 262, 304. Naval Chronology, 162. Navarino, battle of, 314, 322, 335. Navy Board, 39, 50, 81, 101. Navy Pay Department, 332, 350; Deputy Commissioner of, 332. Neagle, James, 111. Nelson, V-Adm Sir Horatio, 3–4, 8, 41, 72, 82, 100, 199; and Barker, 137–8, 146; at Cape St Vincent, 102–4; Chambers’s … when Lord Nelson was killed …, 360; Clarke & M’Arthur’s Life of …, 100, 185, 212; and Clerk of Eldin, 372; and Cockburn, 203; and Copenhagen, 143, 153–4, 237;

Index

Copley’s Death of …, 177; de Loutherbourg’s Surrender of the Spanish Admiral to …, 106; Devis’s, Death of …, 176–7, 190, 227, 310, 357; Dighton’s Fall of …, 177–8, 181, 190; Drummond’s Death of …, 178–9, 182, 192, 310; Flaxman’s memorial, 173; Huggins’s Nelson at Trafalgar, 329; Jones’s, Nelson boarding …, 312; Koster portrait, 155; Miller’s Nelson boarding …, 104; monuments, 223–4; and Nile, 124, 128, 130, 133, 229; Pocock’s Nelson boarding …, 105; Roberts after Buttersworth, Ships captured by …, 154; Serres’s & Tompkin’s, N. at Copenhagen, 237, 239; and Tenerife, 107, 114; and Trafalgar, 157, 165–73; Turner’s, Death of …, 285, 287; West’s Death of …, 156, 173–7, 291, 309; West’s Immorality of …, 173; Westall’s Nelsons, 107–8. Nepean, Evan, 230. Neptune, 94, 171, 182, 241. Newcomen pump, 40. Nicholson, Sam, 105. Nicolas, Lt Paul Harris, rm, 184, 366–7. Nicols, Capt, 280. Nile, Battle of the, 3, 15, 38, 136, 148, 229. See also paintings by: Anderson, 135; Arnald, 145; Barker, 136; Brown, 141; Buttersworth, 132; Cleveley, 133; de Loutherbourg, 115, 140; Fraser, 191; Luny, 316, 319; Serres, 244; Sharp, 191; Turner, 136–7, 264; Whitcombe, 134. Noel, Sir Gerard, 243. North British Advertiser and Ladies’ Journal, 79.

463

Northcote, James, 17–8, 34, 36–7; and Farington, 18; portrait, 17. Norton, Mr, 317. Norwich Castle Gallery, 179. Norwich Society of Artists, 205, 326. Novelist’s Magazine, 92. Oates, Mark, 9. O’Brien, Capt Edward, 115. Offenbach, 99. Omai, 46, 225. Onslow, Adm Sir Richard, 115, 127, 130. Opie, John, 11, 17, 26, 53, 204, 236, 312; portrait, 17. Opposition, 129. Orde, Thomas, 9. Ordnance Department, 8, 28, 150, 158, 217, 220. Orford, Earl of, 35. Orme, 203, 222. Orme, Daniel, 68, 71, 107, 126; De Winter, 126; Nelson, 107; Orme, Edward, 126–7, 203, 222–3; and Cockburn, 203; Crawford, 126–7; and Tobin, 222–3. Orme, William, 127; Camperdown, 127. Orme Gallery, 71. Ormond, Lt, 214. Ormond House, 30. Ossory, Countess, 47. Owen, Samuel, 66. Ozanne, Pierre, 149. Page, J., 168. Paisley, V-Adm Sir Thomas, 84. Palmer, Joseph, 119. Palmer, Sir Roundell, 245. Pandaemonium, 238. Panorama, 86–91, 136–8, 146, 137, 251, 284, 299, 335, 340–2. Parker, Sir Hyde, 4, 143, 239.

464

Parker, Richard, 111, 113. Parliament, 50, 99, 110, 125, 157, 182, 193, 196, 198, 224, 243, 287, 370. Parry, William Edward, 249; Journal … of a North–West Passage, 249. Pasquin, see John Williams. Patser, T., 207. Paul, Czar, 143, 219. Payne, Jane (née Goodridge), 220. Payne, R-Adm John Willet, 85. Payne, Mrs John Willet (née Wilmot), 243. Payne, William, 8, 220. Pelham, Peter, 119. Peninsular War, 216, 312. Perspective, 7–8, 21, 30, 82, 87, 123, 267. Peto, Sir Samuel Morton, 364. Phidias, 16, 35. Phillips, Arthur, 72, 225. Picturesque, 12–3, 15, 248–9, 259. Pindar, Peter, see John Wolcot. Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 12. Pitts, J., 203. Pitt, William, 36, 39, 110, 124, 128, 157–9, 194, 198, 219. Plymouth dockyard, see Devonport. Pocock, Isaac, 79, 82, 200, 309. Pocock, Mary (née Leuchars), 78. Pocock, Nicholas, 5, 7–8, 13, 22, 28, 37, 40, 43, 78–86, 88, 101, 124–5, 185, 199–200, 212, 240, 309, 369; Achille, 82; Agamemnon Engaging, 100; and Anderson, 96; and Bampfylde, 80; and Bligh, 147; Basse Terre, 80; and British Institution, 200; Brunswick & Vengeur, 82–4; Captain Jonis, 81; and Chesham, 135; Defence, 82; Destruction of … Danish Line, 146; Duck-

Index

worth’s Fleet off … the Dardanelles, 199–200; Dutton, 101; Justicia, 203; and Livesay, 203; and Luny, 322; St. Fiorenzo & Amelia, 13; friends, 81, 196; Frigate Bay, 80; at Glorious First, 78, 81–6, 88, 91; Guillaume Tell, 133–4; Nelson boarding, 110; Nelson’s Flagships, 201; Nile, 132; portrait, 79; and Prout, 101, 323; and Reynolds, 80, 262–3; training & method, 78–82, 262–3; Ushant, 1 June 1794, 83; Victory off Stromboli, 185; Windsor Castle Firing, 185–6; Woolwich, 81. Pocock, William Innes, 8, 309. Poetical Magazine, 219. de Poggi, A.C., 73–5, 103. de Poggi, Mrs, 74. Poets’ Gallery, 46, 67. Pollard, Robert, 101, 202. Pomare, Chief, 135. Poole’s Coffee House, 216. Popham, Adm Sir Home, 72. Porter, Robert Ker, 89. Pope Pius VI, 3. Pouncy, B.T., 73. Pratt, Mary, 46–7. Pre-Raphaelites, 324. Price, Sir Uvedale, 12. Prince Regent, see George IV. Prison Hulk, 220, 303. Printing, 371–3. Privateer, 67, 182–3. Prize, 204, 224, 230, 244, 250, 310, 314. Prize agents, 210, 223. Prize money, 310, 333. Prize ships, 252, 367. Prout, Samuel, 101, 220, 323–4, 350, 352, Dutton, 323. Pugin, Augustus, 219, 364. Pye, John, 33–4, 249.

Index

Pyne, James Baker, 343. Pyne, William Henry, 44, 228, 240, 324, 338; Etchings of Rustic Figures, 338; Microcosm: or a Picturesque …, xi, 44, 240; Wine and Walnuts, 44. Pyramids, Battle of the, 129. Quarterly Review, 13, 171, 273. Queen Charlotte, 330. Raeburn, Sir Henry, 215–6. Raimbach, Abraham, 36, 58, 72, 92–3, 102, 111, 124–5, 155, 161, 175–6. Ralfe, James, 162. Ramsay, Thomas, 57. Ramsay, Maj, see Dalhousie, 9th Earl. Rawlins, James Hyndford, 79. Redding, Cyrus, 279, 299, 336. Registry of the Times, 96. Reinagle, George Philip, 322–3, Admiral Napier’s Glorious Triumph, 323; Illustrations of the Battle of Navarino, 322. Reinagle, Joseph, 250. Reinagle, Philip, 251. Reinagle, Ramsay Richard, 89, 187, 251. Reitlinger, Gerald, The Economics of Taste, 337. Rennie, John, 158. Repository of the Arts, 99, 204. Review of Publications of Art, 26, 285, 293, 295. Revolution, 5, 12, 14, 19–20, 111, Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 10–11, 16, 18, 20, 24, 26, 40, 45, 68–9, 80; and Barker, 87, and Hodges, 226; and Serres, 229, 234; and Pocock, 80, 262–3; and Turner, 271, 308. Richmond, George, 269.

465

Rigaud, John, 72, 94–5, 168, 276; and Nelson, 72, 168, 276; Trinity House, 94–5. Rigaud, Stephen, 276; and Turner, 276. Ripley, Thomas, 39. Ritchie, Leitch, Travelling Sketches, 351. Roberts, David, 335, 369. Roberts, P., 154–5. Rodney, Adm George Bridges, 224, 372. Rogers, J., 106, 115, 139. Rogers, Mr, 317. Roget, John Lewis, 343. Romney, George, 4–5, 171; and Emma Hamilton, 4–5. Rooke Officers Mess, Gibraltar, 364. Royal Academy, 5, 9–10, 20–1, 27, 36, 125, 235, 241, 273; expositions: 1781, 120; 1799, 15; 1808, 13; founding of, 16, 22–3; politics, 20, 95, 173, 176, 196. Royal Coburg Theatre, 241. Royal Geographical Society, 246. Royal Mews, 41. Royal Military Academy, Great Marlow, 30, 187, 252. Royal Military Canal, 158. Royal (Naval) Academy, 29, 30–1, 91, 232. Royal Naval College, 30, 203, 252. Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich, 16, 41, 58, 140, 171, 303, 309–12, 330, 356, 362, 364. Royal Pavilion Theatre, 341. Royal Regiment of Artillery, 204. Royal Scottish Academy, 256. Royal Society, 45, 161. Ruskin, John, 19, 21, 32, 259, 262, 265, 267–71, 276–7, 280–2, 291, 298, 300, 303, 305, 307–8, 324–5, 329–30, 353–4, 367;

466

Modern Painters, 19, 259, 265, 267, 308, 325, 353; portrait, 269. Russett, Alan, 360. Rupert, Prince, 371. Rutland, Duke of, 255. Ruysdael, Salomon van, 259. Ryves, Anthony, 242. Sadler’s Wells Theatre, 136, 223. Saint-André, Jeanbon, 51. St Bartholomew’s Hospital, 341. St Crispian, 103. St James’s Palace, 39, 67, 298, 303, 312, 330. St Paul’s Cathedral, 41, 168, 171, 224, 340. St Paul’s, Shadwell, 342. St Valentine, 103. St Vincent, Adm Sir John Jervis, Earl of, 96, 102–6, 109, 185, 312. Salmon, Robert, 37, 186. San Domingo, action at, 193, 200. San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 102. Sandby, Paul, 17, 28, 31, 72, 134, 226, 228, 235; and Cleveley, 72, 226; and Farington, 134; and D. Serres, 228, 235. Sandby, Thomas, 17, 28, 31. Sandby, William, 157. de Saumarez, Adm Sir James Saumarez, Baron, 148–9. Saxe-Cobourg, Prince Leopold of, 241. Scheldt, battle at, 198–9, 203–4. Schetky, Charlotte (née Trevenen), 255. Schetky, Janet, 300. Schetky, John Alexander, 252. Schetky, John Christian, 30–1, 203, 250–7, 300–1, 332, 335; Anson, 256; British Man-of-War Hard and Fast, 255; Frigate and a Con-

Index

voy, 252; James Park, 254; Justicia, 203; and Nasmyth, 335; Odin, 254; Reembarkation of His Majesty, 255; Reminiscences of the Veterans, 256 ; Royal George, 256; Shannon & Chesapeake, 214; Trafalgar, 257; and Turner, 257, 300–1, and Whitcomb, 256. Schetky, Johann Georg Christian, 250. Schetky, Ludmilla, 252. Schetky, Maria Anna Teresa (née Reinagle), 250. Scott, Revd Alexander John, 168. Scott, John, 130. Scott, Sir Walter, 250, 253, 313, 362. Scott, Robert, 100, Scott, Samuel, 13. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 120. Scriven, Edward, 79. Seaforth, Charles Henry, 326, Part of the Battle of Trafalgar, 326. Senefelder, Alois, 372. Serres, Dominic, 8, 42, 228–9, 234; and Short, 228. Serres, Britannia, 236, 240. Serres, Lavinia, 236, 242. Serres, Olivia (née Wilmot), 234–6, 245, 274; books, 242–3. Serres, John Thomas, 6, 24, 28, 30, 35, 227, 229–45, 254–5, 257; and Admiralty, 34, 42, 229–35; Bombardment of Algiers, 241; First of June, 230; Frigate … Eddystone, 229; George the Fourth in Scotland, 244; Liber Nauticus, 239–40; and Luffman, 232; Nile, 244; Pandaemonium, 238; Sea Torch, 232–3, 235, 263; and theatre, 241, 334–5; Tory Island, 13; and Tomkins, 237, 239; Toulon Harbour, 229;

Index

Trafalgar, 192, 227, 244, 257; and Turner, 274; Valetta Harbour, 237; and Vernet, 234. Serres, Miss, 245. Serres, Mrs Sr (née Caldecot), 228. Shakespeare Gallery, 35, 67, 92. Sharp, Michael William, Nile, 191. Sharp, William, 123. Sheridan, Richard, 46. Shugborough Hall, 13. Siddons, Sarah, 81. Singleton, John, 121. Skene, Alexander, 222. Skene, Andrew Motz, 222. Slave, 96, 241, 292, 307, 331. Sloane, Sir Hans, 16. Smart, John, 127. Smirke, Robert, 17, 20, 31, 62, 92–3, 95, 115, 127, 134–5, 158, 224, 283–4, 287, 357; Camperdown, 127–8; Catalogue Raisonné, 92; and Farington, 31, 62, 92; and George III, 95; Glorious First, 92–3; and de Loutherbourg, 184; Midas, 92; Nile, 134–5; portrait 17; and Sandby, 92; Trafalgar column, 224; and Turner, 283–4. Smith, Anker, 125. Smith, Lt George, 221. Smith, John, mp, 193. Smith, John Raphael, 270. Smith, Adm Sir Sidney, 112, 143, 195, 215. Smith, Capt William Sidney, 221. Soane, Sir John, 292. Society of British Artists, 23, 27, 335, 343. Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, 16. Society of Painters in Water–Colour, 22–3, 205, 248; “New” Society … (New Society

467

of Painters in Miniature and …; Associated Artists …), 23. Somerset House, 16, 22, 80. Spencer, George John, Earl, 111, 158, 231–2. Spratt, Lt James, 321. Spring Gardens, 91, 120, 237. Stadler, Constantine, 38, 50, 149, 202. Stanfield, Clarkson, 9, 27, 31, 41, 306, 328, 331–7, 348–57, 363–9; Abandoned, 366; and Bonnington, 336–7; and Chambers, 349, 363; Coast Scenery, 351; Chimes, 350; and Cooke, 220; and Cotman, 328; and Dickens, 35, 350–1; friends, 335; Frigate, 355–7; Herlequin, 335; London Bridge, 335; and Marryat, Menof-War, 366; Morning following Trafalgar, 367–8; and Nasmyth, 335; Navarino, 335; New London Bridge, 336; St. Michael’s Mount, 335; panoramist, 335; patrons, 335; portrait, 352; and Prout, 350; and Ritchie, 351; St. Michael’s Mount, 335; San Joseph, 366; and Schetky, 31, 257; and sea painting, 267; and Serres, 241; Terror, 360; and theatre, 241, 333–6, 350–1; Trafalgar, 192, 336, 351, 363; Travelling Sketches, 351; and Turner, 329; Victory towed, 364–6. Stanfield, George, 335. Stanfield, Henry, 335. Stanfield, James Field, 331. Stanfield, Mary, 333. Stanfield, Mary (née Kell), 331. Stanfield, Mary Hood, 331. Stanfield, Mary (née Hutchinson), 335. Stanfield, Rebecca (née Adcock), 335.

468

Stadholder, see William V. Steam boat, 28, 255, 281–2, 305–6, 308, 313, 328, 351. Stephenson, Rowland, 341. Storr, Capt, 338–9. Strachan, Adm Sir Richard, 82,199, 204. Stuart, Gilbert, 121, 169. Stuart, Gen, 138. Studio: The Watercolours of J.M.W. Turner, 283. Sturm und Drang, 20. Sublime, 10, 14, 20, 68, 76, 179, 259–61, 265, 276–7, 313. Submarine, 28. Surrey dock, 38. Sutherland, Thomas, 126, 162, 185, 203, 214, 257, 336. Sutherland, Duchess of, 335. Swedenborg, Baron, 47. Tarleton, Mrs, 107. Tate Gallery, 54, 256. Tax, 36, 39, 124–5. Telegraph, 39–40, 146, 182, 299. Temple, R., 212–3. Testolini, G., 250. Thackeray, William Makepeace, 305–8, 353, 370. Thatched House Tavern, 200. Thomas, Lt Robert Strickland, 210. Thompson, George, 146, 186. Thompson, print seller, 317. Thompson, V-Adm Sir Thomas Boulden, 135. Thomson, James, 262. Thornbury, Walter, 270, 291. Thornhill, Sir James, 41. Ticknor, George, 168. Tijou, Henry, 140, 302. Tilsit, Treaty of, 195. Times, 58–9, 88–9, 96, 112, 123, 178, 274, 366–7. Titmarsh, Michael Angelo, see

Index

William Makepeace Thackeray. Tobin, Capt George, 98, 210, 222–3, 321; Bonaparte in Torbay, 222–3; Currituck Island, 98; and Luny, 321. Tomkins, Charles, 335. Tomkins, P.W., 237, 239. Torin, Robert, 189. Torpedo, 212. Tower Bridge, 328. Tower of London, 39, 104, 168, 220, 334. Towers, 132, 158–9. Trafalgar, Battle of, 4, 20, 24, 30, 82, 107, 130, 140, 156, 159, 162, 165–9, 171, 173, 175–9, 181, 182, 184–94, 208, 210, 222, 224, 244, 250, 257, 285, 287, 289–93, 298–305, 309, 313–14, 322, 326, 329–31, 336, 351, 357, 360, 363, 365, 367; see also paintings by: Brown, 176; Chambers, 192, 360, 363; Constable, 186–90; Daniell, 313–14; de Loutherbourg, 184, 309; Dighton, 176, 180–1; Drummond, 179, 313; Hellyer, 186; Huggins, 330–1; Luny, 322; Pocock, 82, 185; Salmon, 186; Seaforth, 326; Serres, 244; Stanfield, 336, 351, 363, 367; Turner, 140, 257, 285–93, 298–305, 357; West, 20, 156, 171–6, 309; Webster, 250. Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 320. Transparency, 43–5,120, 136, 156, 264–5, 274, 296, 309, 325, 343, 354. Trinity House, 94, 95, 158, 164. Troubridge, R-Adm Sir Thomas, 106. Trumbull, John, 98, True Briton, 11, 136.

Index

Trustees’ Academy, 100. Tucker, Mr, 317. Tunis, Bey of, 241. Turner, Benjamin, 122–3. Turner, Charles, 126, 156–7, 168, 269. Turner, Daniel, 220. Turner, Dawson, 27, 205, 326–7. Turner, George, 136. Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 4, 6, 9, 18–19, 22, 26–7, 46, 179, 268–309 passim, 364, 369–70; Bay of Baiae, 276; Boats crew carrying out Anchors, 284–5; and Bonnington, 336; Calais Pier, 278, 285; and Callcott, 324–5; and Chambers, 357, 359, 363; Confluence of the Thames, 292–5; and Constable, 190; and Copley Fielding, 325; and Cotman, 327–9; and Daniell, 322; Daphne & Leucippus, 276; Dutch Boats, 277–8; and engravers, 32; 35; Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 136; Fall & Rise of Carthage, 276; Fallacies of Hope, 275, 308; and Fawkes, 135; Fighting Téméraire, 220, 303, 305–6, 352; First Rate taking on Stores, 297–8, Fishermen at Sea, 273, 277, 327; Fishermen on a Lee Shore, 277–8; Fort Vimieux, 304–5; his home, 40; and Huggins, 329–30; Hulks on the Tamar, 303; and Jones, 312; Keelmen, 282; Life Boat & Manby Apparatus, 280, 305; Mouth of the Thames, 280; Nile, 136–7, 264, 284; panoramist, 136–7; Peace, Burial at Sea, 307; portrait, 269; Portsmouth, 303; Rain, Steam & Speed, 282; Rockets & Blue Lights, 307–8; and Schetki, 31, 257; and sea paint-

469

ing, 259, 267, 322–3; and Serres, 244; Sheerness … the Nore, 292–5; Sheerness & … Sheppey, 280; Ship Aground, 304; Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames, 281; St. Michael’s Mount, 302; Shipwreck, Fishing Boats, 278–9; Shoeburyness, 293; Slavers, 307; Snow Storm, 281; Spithead, [Danish Ships], 203–5, 295–7, 299; and Stanfield, 331, 352–4, 357; Sun Rising through Vapour, 292–5; Trafalgar, 140, 257, 298–305, 357; Trafalgar as seen from the Mizzen, 192, 285–94; Venice, 280; Venice, San Giorgio, 280; Victory sketches, 286, 290, 292; Victory Returning, 292; Waterloo, 291; Wreck of a Transport, 303. Tyson, William, 138. Udney, John, 229. Uffizi Gallery, 4. United Irishmen, 150. United States, 42, 67, 98, 111, 192–4, 212–13, 310. University of New Brunswick, 218. Van de Velde, William, 7, 19, 126, 189, 251, 258, 262, 278, 282. Van Loo, Carl, 43. Varley, John, 205, 325, 327. Vernet, Claude-Joseph, 228, 234, 262, 278. Vernon and Hood, 216. Victoria, Queen, 23, 150, 255, 361. Victoria and Albert Museum, 45, 87, 96, 112, 187, 241, 250, 280, 352, 364. Victoria Station, 40. Victories, 222. Villaret de Joyeuse, R-Adm de, 51–2, 109.

470

Villeneuve, V-Adm, Pierre de, 162, 166–7. Volunteer Company, 157–8. Walcheren fever, 198. Walker, Elizabeth, 91. Walker, Richard, 4. Walker Art Gallery, 179. Walpole, Horace, 12, 47. Walter, Joseph, 37. Ward, James, 36, 125. Warner, Oliver, 4. Warren, Sir John Borlase, 9, 157, 161. Warwick, Earl of, 234. Washington, Gen George, 98. Waterman’s Arms, 339. Watkins, John, 6, 337, 340, 342, 345, 347, 349. Webster, George, 250–1; Annamabee, 250; Bonne Citoyenne, 250–1; Cape Coast Castle, 250; First Rate in a Storm, 250; Frigate in a Calm, 250; 74 in a Fresh Gale, 250; Trafalgar, 250; Vessel in the Surf, 250. Weir, James, 9, 131, 151. Wellington, Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 106, 245, 248. Wells, Clara, 272 Wells, William, 240. Wells, William Frederick, 272, 305. West, Benjamin, 4, 14, 17, 45, 157, 298, 309; and Barker, 87; and British Institution, 236, 241; and Brown, 67, 69; and Constable, 187; and Copley, 118–19; 124; Death of General Wolfe, 68, 291; Death of Lord Nelson, 168–71, 174–6, 309; Death of Lord Nelson in the Cockpit …, 173–4, 212; Destruction of the French Fleet in … La Hogue, 357, 373; and Devis, 176; and Fulton, 28;

Index

and George III, 20, 26, 95; Immortality of Nelson, 171–2; and Livesay, 91; in Paris, 156, 251; and Pocock, 200; and RA, 20, 26, 95; and Schetky, 251; and Trumbull, 98; and Turner, 278, 285, 287, 291, 293, 298; and Westall, 245. West India dock, 38. West Indies, 80, 96, 165, 220, 228, 321. Westall, Mary, see Daniell, 161–2, 245. Westall, Richard, 17, 107–9, 158, 222, 245; and M. Brown, 107; Cape Schanck, 246; and Farington, 222; Nelson … San Nicolas, Nelson … Spanish Launch, Nelson Wounded, and Nelson … Impractical, 107–8; portrait, 17. Westall, William, 33–4, 162, 245–9; and Admiralty, 34, 162, 245–9; View … Seaforth’s Islands, and View New South Wales, 249; Wreck Reef, 246–7. Wharley Camp, 46. Whichelo, John, 323. Whitby Repository, 343. Whitcombe, Thomas, 126, 134, 146, 185, 201–3, 210, 214, 256–7, 309, 343; Amelia … and L’Arethuse, 256–7; and Chambers, 343; Camperdown, 126; Dardanelles, 201; Naval Achievements, 203; Nile, 136; and Ramage, 146; and Schetky, 256; and Sutherland, 203, 257. White, George, 50, 63, 72. White, George Harlow, 113. Whitehall Palace, 39. Whitehaven, 37, 100. Whiteway, J. Hayman, 320. Whitley, William, 46–7. Whitman, Alfred, 126.

Index

Wight, R-Adm John, 321. Wigstead, Henry, 76–7. Wilkie, Sir David, 197, 264, 307, 323. William V, Prince and Stadholder, 59, 109, 151. William Shipley’s Academy, 225. Williams, engraver, 207. Williams, Charles, Buonaparte really taken!!, 129; Coffin Expedition, 165; Jack Tars, 195; Maddy in Full Flight, 212; Williams, John (alias Pasquin), 11, 14, 25, 69, 74, 81, 92, 118, 229, 273; Memoirs of the Royal Academicians, 69, 118. Williams, Robert, 57. Williams, V-Adm Sir Thomas, 231, 333. Wilmerding, John, 105. Wilson, 141. Wilson, Capt, 227. Wilson, Richard, 76, 225, 258, 296. Wilton, Andrew, 353. Windham, William, 50. Windsor Castle, 20, 91. Wiseman, Cardinal Nicholas, 364. Wolcot, John, 45, 204. Wolfe, Gen James, 68, 169, 170, 173–4. Woolford, G., 150. Woolford, John Elliott, 150–2, 214–18; Marmorice, 150; 2nd Queen’s, 150–2; Woolford, Margaret (née Fullerton), 152, 217. Woollett, William, 35–6. Woolnoth, W., 249. Woolwich Academy, 28, 150, 201, 226. Wren, Sir Christopher, 41. Wright, Joseph (of Derby), 14, 287. Wyatt, James, 17, 20, 94; portrait, 17.

471

Wyatt, Samuel, 94. Yale Center for British Art, 89, 233, 353. Yarborough, Earl of, 292. Yates, Thomas, 9. York, Duke of, 7, 22, 48–50, 57, 68, 152, 205, 226, 232. Ziff, Jerrold, 276.

gazeteer British Isles Bath, 309. Bristol, 37, 40, 78–9, 81, 263, 317, 343 (Corn St, 317). Bristol Channel, 214. Chelsea, 30, 40, 66, 156, 228, 234, 272. Chertsey, 160. Combe Hill, 199. Cornwall, 256, 313, 315, 351: St Austell,166; St Ewe,166; Scilly Isles, 4, 103. Cumberland, 37, 92, 243; Derwentwater, 86; Lake District, 249. Devon, 279: Bigbury Bay, 279, 299; Mount Edgcumbe, 220; Empacombe, 220; Exeter, 111, 317, 322; Loe Pool, 256; Plymouth (see separate entry); Ram Head, 280; Tamar River, 38, 299, 303; Teignmouth, 316–17, 320–2 (Brookfield, 320; Old Market St/Teign St, 321; Villiars St, 317). Didsbury, 302. Durham, 126. Edinburgh, 87, 100, 106, 111, 151–2, 214–16, 240, 244, 250–1, 300–1, 310, 332, 334–5: Dublin

472

St, 215–6; High Terrace, 152; Leith St, 152; North Logie Green, 216; Princess Street, 216. Harwich, 39, 281. Humber River, 94, 337, 340. Ireland, 109, 128–9, 255: Bantry Bay, 109; Cork, 152; Dublin, 228, 231; Waterford, 212; Wexford, 150. Kent, 158: Chatham, 38–9, 50–1, 81, 122, 150, 173, 189, 345; Dover, 53, 165, 182, 185, 189, 221; Downs, 38–9, 161, 189, 326, 339; Gravesend, 111, 189. Greenwich, 38, 40, 96, 114, 171, 173, 199, 303, 310; Isle of Sheppey, 292–3, 295; Margate, 271–2, 305; Medway River, 39, 94, 122, 127, 130, 189, 279, 285, 292, 327–8, 345; Nore, 36, 39, 86, 110–12, 114, 127, 173, 285, 292–3, 322, 328, 337, 361; Ramsgate, 339, 361, 364; Rochester, 158, 189; Sheerness, 38–9, 111, 122, 285, 292–3, 295, 300, 305, 332–3, 337; Shoeburyness, 293. Kingston-on-Hull, 159. Liverpool, 37, 173, 179, 186, 230, 309, 325, 331, 363. London: Albemarle Street, 124; Bedford estate, “Bedfordbury,” 39, 118; Berkeley Estate, 39; Blackfriars, 37, 87; Bond St, 20, 71, 73, 239, 323, 349; Borough High St, 40; Borough Road, 40; Brook St, 248; Cable St, 334; Chelsea, 40, 66, 156, 228, 234, 272; City of London, 120, 129, 138; Coleman St, 232; Covent Garden, 46, 225, 270; Cran-

Index

bourne St, 87; Crutched-friars, 95; Deptford, 9, 38, 50, 72, 81, 104, 226, 316; Drury Lane, 43, 45–6, 53, 335–6; Gracechurch St, 215; Great George Street, 40, 81; Green Park, 25, 39–40, 124; Grosvenor Estate, 39; Hackney, 38; Hammersmith Terrace, 184; Haymarket, 87; Horseferry Road, 40; Hyde Park, 39, 223; Isle of Dogs, 38; Kensington, 37, 39, 324; Kensington Gravel Pits, 324; Lambeth, 241, 334–5; Leadenhall St, 315–6, 329; Leicester Fields, 40, 80; Leicester Place, 87; Leicester Square, 44, 89–90; Maiden Lane, 270; Mare Street, 38; Mark Lane, 316; Marylebone Park, 39; Mayfair, 39–40; New Bond Street, 73, 239; Oxford St, 40; Paddington, 37; Pall Mall, 16, 23, 40, 58, 149, 241; Park St, 220; Picadilly, 156; Portland Place, 40; Queen Anne St, 275, 307; Regent St, 39–40; St James’s Square, 236; St James’s Park, 39; St Mary-le-Strand, 67; Serpentine Pond, 223; Seven Dials, 129; Shadwell, 342; Southwark, 37; Stepney, 37; Strand, 16, 89, 99; Thames River, 9, 37–9, 72, 94, 110–11, 220, 279, 281, 292–5, 299, 307, 316, 325, 327–8, 336–7, 345; Tichbourne St, 216; Tottenham Court Rd, 40, 361; Trafalgar Square, 41; Wapping, 339; Wapping Wall, 341; Warren St, 157; Wellclose Sq, 334; Westminster, 37, 39–40, 48, 68, 81, 101, 220, 364; Whitcomb St, 23; Whitechapel, 91, 342. Massingham, 166.

Index

Needles Rocks, 264, 277, 292, 327. Norfolk, 35, 200, 205, 327: Breydon Water, 326; Broads, 326; Cromer, 205, 209; Felbrigg, 205; Lowestoft, 328; Norwich, 23, 50, 127, 179, 191, 204–5, 209, 326–7; Great Yarmouth, 110, 114, 205, 326, 328. North Sea, 110, 268. Oxford, 252, 268, 279, 308, 317. Plymouth, 8, 38–9, 101, 136, 197, 231, 264, 317, 323, 335–6, 350–1. Portsmouth, 29–31, 38–40, 48, 68, 72, 82, 91, 93, 182, 185, 196, 203, 220, 252–255, 295, 300, 303, 336, 346–7, 351–2, 355, 357, 359, 361, 365; Hale Lake, 300. Rokeby Park, 205. Rougham, 166. Scotland, 37, 100, 240, 244, 255, 303, 313: Clyde River, 313; Edinburgh (see separate entry); Greenock, 37; Hebrides, 227; Ilan Dreoch, 313; Orkneys, 227. Severn River, 94. Somerset, 80. Southampton, 99, 253, 327. Southwold, 328. Spithead, 36, 38, 44, 51, 55, 58, 60, 67–9, 74–5, 77, 86–7, 89, 91, 104, 109–12, 132, 135, 197–8, 230–1, 245, 252, 295, 297, 299, 309. Stonehouse, 129. Sunderland, 9, 126, 331–2 (Playhouse Lane, 331).

473

Tilbury, 111. Warwickshire, 234. Weymouth, 129. Whitby, 9, 337–40, 343, 345, 349, 360–361. Wight, Isle of, 86, 104, 277, 292, 327, 340. Woolwich, 38, 81, 204, 315, 328. Europe & Mediterranean Antwerp, 198, 203. Basel, 48. Batavian Republic, see Netherlands. Corsica, 100–2, 185, 198: Bastia, 100–1, 104. Denmark, 143, 195, 205, 296: Copenhagen, 4, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137–9, 141, 143, 146–9, 151–5, 157, 159, 161, 163, 195, 198–9, 201–4, 208, 222, 237, 239, 295. Egypt, 129, 143, 151–3, 215: Aboukir, 129, 151–2, 284; Acre, 104, 142, 195, 222; Rosetta, 151. France, 216, 231, 233–4, 245, 249, 251, 277, 336, 351: Basque Roads, 196, 198–9, 203; Bec du Ras, 231; Calais, 278, 281, 285, 336; Charente, 196; Cherbourg, 210; Corsica (see separate entry); Dieppe, 327; Dunkirk, 49; Brest, 28, 42, 51–2, 67, 86, 109, 132, 154, 196, 230–1; Elba, 221; Mont St Michel, 327; Porto Ferraio, 221; Rochefort, 165; Paris, 20, 39, 43, 48, 52, 67, 76, 99, 105, 109, 155–6, 161, 173, 251,

474

303, 337 (Quai Voltaire, 268); St Raphael, 221; Toulon, 99–102, 106, 128–9, 133, 165, 185, 230, 252. Germany, 99, 112, 228–9, 277: Saxony, 99. Gibraltar, 3, 25, 69–70, 102, 119–20, 123–4, 128, 132, 148, 151, 196, 233, 252, 283, 317, 364–6. Greece, 81. Italy, 3, 12, 23–4, 102, 126, 137, 173, 234, 244, 251, 277, 280, 364: Florence, 4, 229; Genoa, 132, 154, 229; Ischia, 317; Livorno, 102, 229; Naples, 3–4, 102,141–3, 210, 229, 317, 326; Palermo, 3–4, 137, 141; Pisa, 229; Rome, 3–4, 23–24, 229, 251, 262, 276; Savoy, 229; Stromboli, 185; Venice, 280. Malta, 129, 151–2, 362, 364: Valetta, 121, 237. Mediterranean, 96, 99, 101, 102, 128, 132–3, 137, 142, 148–52, 157, 167, 185, 204, 215, 232, 321, 347, 362: Gulf of Lyons, 102. Netherlands, 42, 59, 102, 109–10, 127, 151, 361: Flushing, 198–9, 204, 207; Scheldt River, 198–9, 203–4; Texel, 111–12, 114, 210; Walcheren, 216; Zuyder Zee, 361. Portugal, 102, 132, 195, 196, 229, 321, 252, 323: Canary Islands, 132 (Santa Cruiz de Tenerife, 107, 141); Lisbon, 101, 195; Tagus, 104–5, 135, 196. Russia, 106, 112, 132–3, 143,

Index

194–7, 212: St Petersburg, 106, 219, 338. Spain, 14, 25, 65, 42, 99, 102–3, 106–9, 119–20, 132–3, 135, 143, 157, 165–6, 193, 196, 231, 347–8, 367: Cadiz, 79, 102, 104–5, 128, 132, 165–7, 185, 367; Madeira, 132, 247–8, 362; Minorca, 79, 101, 105, 132, 151; Port Mahon, 101, 137–8. Turkey: Bosphorus, 195; Constantinople, 137; Marmorice Bay, 150–1, 215. World Africa, 190, 201, 210, 249–50: Cape of Good Hope, 160, 171, 210, 314; Carthage, 276, Lataku, 314. Australia, 98, 161, 235, 245–8: Botany Bay, 72, 235; Cape Schanck, 246; Guinea, 101, 250, 331; Port Phillips, 225, 246; Sydney, 225. Banda-Neira, 211. Batavia, 211. Bering Strait, 225. Brazil, 81, 195. Chile, 81. China, 159–60, 162–3, 189–90, 220, 227, 247–8, 334: Canton, 159, 267, Whampoa, 334. Comfort, Cape, 360. Greenland, 326, 338–9. Iceland, 227. India, 34, 80, 127, 129, 160, 162, 222, 225–6, 248: Bombay, 329; Calcutta, 159, 329; Madras, 334.

Index

475

Isle de France, 212–3, 249.

index of ships

Lower Canada, 216: Côteau du Lac, 217; Quebec City, 171, 217, 228; Vaudreuil, 217.

Adamant, 110, 112. Agamemnon, 100, 133, 200. Albion, 357. Alexander, 133, 332. Alfred, 53. Amerique, 60. Anson, 256. Aquilon, 54.106. Argo, 279. Argus, 214. Ariel, 281. Atlas, 159. Audacious, 131. Barfleur, 72, 104. Bellerophon, 84, 222–3. Belleisle, 367. Berwick, 251. Betsey, 79. Bombay Castle, 161–2. Brisk, 210. Brumaire, 143. Brunswick, 82–6. Bucentaur, 167. Ça Ira, 100. Caesar, 148–9. Captain, 103–4. Caroline, 104–5, 132. Chesapeake, 213–4, 250, 256. Chevrette, 154. Childers, 41. Clyde, 231, 237. Colossus, 4. Coutts, 187, 189, 337. Culloden, 106, 191. Defence, 71, 82, 368. Delight, 279. Dreadnaught, 164. Dutton, 101, 322–3. Earl Camden, 161–2. Elephant, 200. Endymion, 214–15, 231, 256. Equity, 337–9.

Mauritius, see Isle de France. New Brunswick, 217–18, 361: Fredericton, 217, 361 (Churchill Row, 217); Saint John, 217; St John River, 217. Newfoundland, 48, 226: Placentia, 48. Nootka Sound, 225. Nova Scotia, 121, 216: Halifax, 98, 121, 216, 325 (Granville St, 216). Pacific Ocean, 6, 20, 34, 160, 225–7, 249. Philippines, 334. St Helena, 161, 222–3. Society Islands, 46. Sri Lanka, 162, 248, 314. Tahiti, 135, 225. Tartary, 160. United States: Albany, 28; Boston, 37, 67, 96, 119, 139, 168; Hawaii, 225; Massachusetts, 43; New York, 28, 310; South Carolina (Charleston) 317; Pennsylvania, 20; Washington, 212. Upper Canada: Lake Ontario, 217; Lake Superior, 217; Niagara Falls, 217; Toronto (York), 212. West Indies: Antigua, 100; Guadeloupe, 96; Jamaica, 248; Havana, 120; Hispaniola, 67; Martinique, 96–7; St Lucia, 96.

476

Experiment, 337. Flora, 132. Genereux, 148. Guierrere, 222. Halsewell, 44. Hero, 210. Hibernia, 221. Hind, 250. Hope, 334. Ildefonso, 367. Impetueux, 86. Investigator, 161, 245–6. Jessie, 326. Juste, 60, 86. Kennet, 112, 114. Kent, 122. Kent, Indiaman, 314. Leander, 135, 148. Leviathan, 85. Lloyd, 79. Lufra, 253. Mars, 167, 205, 208–9. Minden, 357. Minerva, 210. Minerva, snow, 79. Montagne, 59, 71, 84–5. Naiade, 367. Namur, 332–3. Northumberland, 86, 98, 222, 231. Nymph, 9, 231. Odin, 203, 254. L’Orient, 129, 136, 141, 145, 155, 191, 284. Pegasus, 81, 88. Pelican, 214. Perseverance, 329. President, 214–5. Prince, 230. Princess Augusta, 72, 228. Princess Charlotte, 98, 210, 321.

Index

Queen, 82–3, 88, 93. Queen Charlotte, 14, 55, 58–60, 69–71, 83–6, 88, 132, 312, 357. Redoutable, 178, 250, 299. Redpole, 214. Renaldo, 214. Rivoli, 214. Royal George, 70, 77, 253, 256–7, 262, 345, 355. Royal Sovereign, 85. Russell, 85. St Lawrence, 217. San Josef (Joseph), 57, 103–6, 171, 312, 364, 366. San Nicolas, 103, 105–7, 171. Sans Pareil, 60, 231. Santissima Trinidad, 103, 312. Shannon, 213–4, 250, 256. Sovereign, 338. Spartan, 210. Swan, 160. Swiftsure, 251. Téméraire, 167, 187, 220, 250, 303, 305–6, 352. Theseus, 104, 131. Tigre, 215. Tigre, armed vessel, 3. Undaunted, 221. Vanguard, 133, 138, 200. Venerable, 57, 110, 115, 122, 126, Vengeur, 53, 70, 82–85, 91. Victory, 4, 31, 167–8, 173–4, 176, 178–90, 192, 200, 255, 257, 285–6, 289–90, 292, 298–303, 312–13, 330, 335, 352, 360, 364–5. Vryheid, 115. Warley, 333. Windsor Castle, 185–6, 194. Windsor Castle packet, 182–3.

Page 188 John Constable - His Majesty's Ship Victory - Captain E. Harvey - in the Memorable Battle of Trafalgar - between two French ships of the line © V&A WS4 169-1888 Page 202 Thomas Whitcombe - The squadron under the command of Sir JT Duckworth forcing the narrow channel of the Dardanelles - February 19th 1807 © NMM BHC 0575 Page 254 John Christian Schetky - HMS Odin, 74 guns, captured from the Danish in 1807, at anchor in Portsmouth harbour © NMM PAD 9418 Page 318-9 Thomas Luny - The Battle of the Nile 1 August 1798 © NMM BHC 0512 Page 366 Clarkson Stanfield - The Breaking Up of the San Joseph © NMM PAF 6066 Page 366 Clarkson Stanfield - The 'Victory' towed into Gibraltar, Guildhall Art Gallery © City of London 734