One of the most famous of all portraits of Lord Nelson, this picture by Lemuel Francis Abbott shows him as a hero in the full glory of his military decorations. The original picture hangs in Britain’s National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

With a chestful of gold medals and a spectacular “chelengk” in his hat (a plume of triumph with 13 diamond-encrusted sprays representing the French ships at the Battle of Nile set around a rotating central diamond, given by the Turkish Sultan) Nelson – the superstar of his day – cut a dashing but odd and somewhat controversial figure,, as decorations were not as usual in military life as we they are today. Some other naval officers derided him for wearing them.

Dr. Colin White, the renowned Nelsonian scholar and author of The Nelson A to Z, notes that by the end of his life Nelson was entitled to wear the stars of four orders of knighthood and two official gold medals seen here on ribbons around his neck – the King’s Naval Gold Medals for the Battles of Cape St Vincent and the Nile, which were among the first British named campaign medals ever issued, rare and very highly prized.

Nelson’s wore his stars on his left breast – the premier decoration was the star of the Order of the Bath, a high British decoration. The other three stars were all unusual – the King of Naples gave Nelson and his Nile captains the specially created Order of St Ferdinand and Merit (a non-Catholic order of knighthood) while for the same battle The Sultan of Turkey gave Nelson the special, new and non-Muslim Order of the Crescent. The Order of St Joachim was a private German order of chivalry.

This print is available from our webshop.

Share This

With the 202nd anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar coming later this week, it’s a good time to have another look at one of the finest, large-scale modern maritime paintings.

The picture is Steven Dews’ Battle of Trafalgar painted over 7 years with the aid of several maritime museum curators to be released in 2005 for the 200th anniversary of this momentous battle.

The original oil painting made £95,000 at Bonham’s auction in their famoust London auction rooms. Since then, series of fabulous prints has been on sale and Artists Harbour is proud to say that we have been one of the most successful sellers of the large canvas print,1676mm x 1016mm(66-inches by 40-inches) which effectively from a distance of 1 metre gives you a £100,000 picture for around £1,000.

We accompany the large print with three historic pictures that illuminate the wonderful Dews canvas.

(more…)

Share This

The World’s First Battleship & Britain’s Last Battleship

Before the HMS Warrior was restored to her full glory and installed as one of the great attractions of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on the south coast, she was sent to Hartlepool for complete renovation. While there, local artist John Wigston virtually had her to himself as an artist.

John is a maritime artist of some distinction. A dozen of his paintings were hung in the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner. He painted a series of fine pictures of HMS Warrior and the men who served in her working below decks.

HMS Warrior is a naval icon - the first ironclad, propeller-and-sail driven warship. When she was built she was the greatest warship in the world, impervious to the firepower of all other warships. She revolutionised naval warfare, was the ultimate weapon of the mid-19th Century and formed the blueprint for the great dreadnoughts that followed and whose great grey steel successors dominated war at sea throughout the 20th century.

HMS Vanguard was Britain’s last and biggest battleship. It was commissionned in 1946 and is famous for being the only British battleship “never to fire her guns in anger”.

For more artworks by John Wigston, go to his page in our webshop.

Share This

We now have giclee prints available from the fabulous new picture of HMS Victory by Portsmouth’s artist Chris N. Wood. As you may know if you read our newsletter, Chris started this picture following a suggestion of someone in the Ministry of Defence. The idea behind that truly gorgeous small-scale oil painting of HMS Victory (Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar), was to create a truly iconic image of the Royal Navy.

We’ve now scanned the original oil painting before it gets sent to its new owner, a collector from Portugal who bought the picture while Chris was working on it in our gallery during a reception.

Chris was born in Suffolk in 1952. He studied at Ipswich School of Art followed by a post graduate year at Wimbledon School of Art. This led to working as a graphic designer in central London, running a successful yacht chandlery and working freelance as a fine artist and illustrator. He has taught fine art in a number of colleges and institutions and currently teaches full time at St Vincent College in Gosport. His work is multi-disciplinary, often biographical and reflects his varied interests. Drawing is central to his practice, as are the relationship of line and form.

Chris is passionate about the sea and this is a recurring theme in both his two and three-dimensional work.

He has been a member of Art Space, Portsmouth for the last ten years and has exhibited painting and sculpture both in his native East Anglia and along the South coast.

Share This

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), was a noted cartoonist with a biting line in sarcasm and political satire. He was also the first illustrator of Oliver Twist, one of the greatest novels penned by his close friend, Charles Dickens, with such memorable pictures as ‘Oliver Asking For More’, and ‘Fagin In The Condemned Cell’. Their friendship ended when, later in life, the cartoonist became a passionate advocate for the temperance movement while Dickens remained opposed. Cruikshank was considered a great enough artist to be exhumed from his original burial place in order to be re-buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

Wikipedia notes that “Cruikshank’s work included a personification of England named John Bull who was developed from about 1790 in conjunction with other British satirical artists such as James Gillray, and Thomas Rowlandson.” Gilray was one of his major influences and Cruikshank eventually replaced him as England’s most popular satirist.

Cruikshank’s series of 8 naval-themed cartoons lampoon prominent figures in military and political life. The cartoons, each labelled with a Plate number from No.1 to No.8, chronicle the career in the Royal Navy of Master Blockhead, who starts as a Midshipman. Our reproduction prints of the series were taken from original Victorian engraved editions and watercoloured for us by a skilled artist. The colours used were based on the colours in a set of the same cartoons in the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, England. Our prints are reproduced by the giclee process using long-life archival quality materials.

These 8 naval cartoons and Frontispiece constitute The Sailors Progress series and are available from Artists Harbour webshop.

Share This