File:'One Hundred Years Ago 1805-1905' RMG PZ7610.tiff

(Updated, December 2013) From an oil painting marking the Trafalgar centenary, bearing Holden's signature and the date lower left, reproduced in the plate. It shows a Royal Naval seaman in the 'Nelson Room' off the Upper Hall in the Painted Hall of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Earlier this was the Greenwich Hospital records room, where Nelson's coffin was first placed on its arrival on 23 December 1805 before his lying in state in January 1806.

The seaman leans on the iron guard rail looking at Nelson paintings from the Greenwich Hospital collection hanging on the west wall, some of which have their catalogue number tablets legible on the frames, although these predate the current Hospital numbering based on the 1922 Painted Hall catalogue. They hang in four vertical rows: from the left, (1, top) Richard Westall's 'Nelson and the Bear', BHC2907; (bottom) West's 'Death of Nelson' [no. 137?], BHC0566; (2, top) Westall's, 'Nelson wounded at Tenerife' [no. 132], BHC0498 and (bottom) 'Nelson and the Spanish launch', BHC2908; (3, top) unknown artist, possibly Guy Head, 'Nelson wounded at the Nile' [no. 140], BHC2903; (centre) Abbott, 'Nelson' in hat [no. 150], BHC2889; (bottom) David Roberts, 'Greenwich Hospital', BHC1826; (4, top) Westall's, 'Nelson receiving the surrender of the San Nicolas' [no. 147], BHC2909; and (bottom) 'Nelson boarding a captured ship', BHC0421. A picture partly seen on the left flank wall may be Whitcombe's 'Battle of the Nile', BHC0517, with an unidentifiable portrait above.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that the Nelson Room as shown here probably only dated from the arrival of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich in 1873, though originally brought into use for picture display purpose in 1846. It was dedicated to Nelsoniana from at least as early as 1849 when the Westall and West pictures engraved for Clarke and McArthur's 'Life' of Nelson, and the Abbott portrait, were presented as a group and first hung there. A photograph of 1934 in the National Monuments Record shows it as then much the same as in this image, though with busts under a picture on the left. It was dismantled when the Greenwich Hospital Collection was transferred to the NMM in 1936 and became a catering service area for the Painted Hall. It remained so until after the Navy left in 1998 but has more recently been reconverted for public display purposes. This is a proof copy before letter. It is signed by the artist in pencil, lower left, below the image. For another copy, see PAI7851.