Battle of Trafalgar

Location

Country: Sweden
City: Stockholm
Place: British Embassy

Vast naval ships are aligned in formation, many flying the British flag. Their rigging is in disarray and their sails in tatters. To the right of the composition, fire consumes one of the vessels, while in the centre, a rowing boat full of men heads towards the larger ships.

Another painting by Thomas Luny depicting this event is in the collection of the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia, dated 1806. While a third Luny painting of ‘The Battle of Trafalgar’, signed and dated 1826, is held in the Royal Navy Museum, Portsmouth.

Thomas Luny, marine painter, apparently studied with the artist Francis Holman in London. He exhibited mostly at the Royal Academy, where he showed his work every year from 1780 to 1793. He showed nothing after 1793 until 1802, when he exhibited 'Battle of the Nile', and then nothing until the year of his death, when he exhibited three pictures. It is possible that in 1793 he joined the Royal Navy to fight in the French Revolutionary Wars. Luny retired to Teignmouth in Devon, in about 1810, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. In spite of being crippled by arthritis in both his hands and his legs for over 30 years he continued to paint assiduously and his total life's work is thought to have produced some 3000 pictures.

Places

Subjects

rowing boat, smoke, ensign (ship), Battle of Trafalgar, ship

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil, oil painting

Artist

Thomas Luny (1759 - 1837)

Title

Battle of Trafalgar

Date

1810

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 152.50 cm, width: 236.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Appleby Bros, December 1952

Inscription

sd

Provenance

Purchased from Appleby Bros. 1952

GAC number

2008