Lot 266
Auction: Day One: 09 July 2008 | From 12:00
Description
Admiral Nelson falling into the arms of Victory … London: I. Hinton, Dec. 12, 1805. Framed, large size.
Note: Le Quesne 51. In these allegorical pictures, it is the dying Nelson himself, not a bust or portrait, to whom the mythical figures of Britannia, etc. express their grief as he dies in the arms of Victory. “Crude as they are in artistic terms and, to our taste, expressing an excessive adulation for the dying hero, these pictures should not be construed as reflecting the emotions confined at that time to he less sophisticated strata of society. Essentially the same response .. is reflected in the later, technically utterly different … the ‘Immortality of Nelson’ by Benjamin West, and the ‘Apotheosis of Nelson’ by Nicholas Legrand …” Le Quesne p. 16.