Greenwich Hospital and Naval Heroes

This framed watercolour was recorded previously as 'Greenwich Hospital 1832, Anniversary of Trafalgar'. With the dimensions given here (which are too wide for PAJ2612) this suggests there has been a recording confusion with James Holland's panoramic drawing of that subject, which is PAH3253. PAJ2612 is S.P. Denning's watercolour reduction of Burnet's oil painting, which was exhibited with the above title at the British Institution in 1837, having already been engraved (1836) as 'Greenwich Pensioners celebrating the Battle of Trafalgar' (which they are shown doing in Greenwich Park). It was conceived by Burnet, as a 'naval' pendant to his friend David Wilkie's earlier painting, commissioned by the Duke of Wellington, of Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo dispatch, which Burnet had engraved. Burnet in turn persuaded the Duke to come and see it on exhibition, where he bought it for 500 guineas, and it is today still with the Wilkie in Apsley House. Denning - a miniaturist, watercolourist and later the Keeper of Pictures at Dulwich Picture Gallery - also made a similar reduction of the Wilkie from which Burnet had previously engraved that plate, as he did from PAJ2612.
Stephen Poyntz Denning