The Fanshawes' sitting room

The Fanshawes' sitting room Although this drawing is the opening one in an album covering Fanshawe's service in the Pacific as captain of HMS 'Daphne' in 1848–52, it is probably later in date. It shows a first-floor drawing-room with windows opening onto a balcony, which looks out on red brick buildings. The room is ornamented with potted plants, and several pictures hang on the wall to the left of the windows. The largest of these pictures is a watercolour depicting 'Daphne' with HMS 'Asia' and 'Implacable', off Alexandria in 1840. Fanshawe was then first lieutenant of 'Daphne' under Captain John Wyndham Dalling, who subsequently became his brother-in-law. The watercolour was a copy made for Fanshawe by a Mrs Fox of an original painting commissioned by Dalling from Charles Seaforth in 1842. It is illustrated in Alice Fanshawe’s biography of her father, published in 1904 (facing page 80). The crucifix on the table is evidence of Fanshawe’s piety: even as a young man his reading included theology, and the family motto was 'Dux vitae ratio, in cruce victoria' ('reason is the guide to life, in the cross lies victory'). The room appears to be the first floor sitting room at the back of the Superintendent’s House (now the Commissioner’s House) at Chatham Dockyard.

Original size: 230 mm x 325 mm

Artist: Admiral Sir Edward Gennys Fanashawe

Date: 1855