NELSON Vice Admiral, Viscount
£600
Auction: 1 February 2005 at 11:00 GMT
Description
Mezzotint engraving by George Clint after the portrait by W. Allison, published in Edinburgh by P. Garof, 1 March 1806. 43 x 34 cms. Hogarth frame. Titled: 'The Rt Hon. Admiral Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte, etc, who gloriously fell in the Battle of Trafalgar on the 21st of October 1805'. Nelson is shown at half-length in the undress uniform of a Rear Admiral, wearing the Naval Gold Medals for St Vincent and the Nile and with the stars of the Order of the Bath, the Order of the Crescent and of St Ferdinand and Merit. Allison's oil portrait, said to have been full-length, was painted after Trafalgar to meet the demand for posthumous likenesses. The lower margin (with the title) partly damaged and with pieces cut from each side, possibly in connection with a previous mounting.
Note: Described by Commander Charles N. Robinson, RN, "The Engraved Portraits of Nelson", The Print Collector's Quarterly, 17 (1930), pp. 327-9, as "considered an excellent portrait", the image is not listed in the British Museum Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits nor in Richard Walker, The Nelson Portraits; An Iconography of Horatio, Viscount Nelson, Royal Naval Museum, 1998