Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson Receiving His Mortal Wound by Samuel Drummond

Samuel Drummond
1765-1844 | British

Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson Receiving His Mortal Wound

Oil on canvas

This extraordinary painting by Samuel Drummond is the earliest known artistic depiction of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson receiving his mortal wound at the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain’s greatest naval victory, won at the cost of its greatest commander. It was the first of Drummond’s numerous treatments of Nelson’s death and was almost certainly exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806. 

Nelson’s fleet decisively defeated the combined French and Spanish forces at Trafalgar on October 21, 1805, but the admiral was shot aboard HMS Victory and died later that day. News of the battle did not reach London until early November. With no photographic record of the event, artists depended upon written reports and eyewitness testimony to reconstruct Nelson’s final moments. Few were better positioned to respond than Drummond. He had gone to sea at fourteen and drew upon years of maritime experience in his paintings, while his portraits of prominent naval officers and later portrait of Nelson’s daughter Horatia indicate his connections to British naval circles. He worked with exceptional speed as reports of Trafalgar reached England. 

Drummond places the viewer on Victory’s main deck at the instant Nelson collapses into the arms of the men surrounding him. An officer and two sailors cradle the admiral while an officer of marines assists, their arrangement deliberately recalling the devotional imagery of the Pietà. Nelson turns toward Captain Masterman Hardy as the battle continues around them. A gun crew prepares its next shot, while above, a British sailor raises his hat in celebration as an enemy vessel strikes its colors. He remains unaware that behind him the commander responsible for Britain’s victory has just received his fatal wound. 

Most fascinating are the details that reveal just how soon after Trafalgar Drummond painted the scene. A bloody wound appears on Nelson’s chest, corresponding with the earliest reports of the shooting. First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Barham initially informed Lady Nelson that the admiral had fallen from a musket ball entering his chest; later testimony established that the fatal shot had entered through his shoulder from above. Nelson’s sword also lies at his feet, painted before it became known that he had left the weapon in his cabin on the morning of the battle. 

Drummond quickly entrusted the image to engraver William Barnard, who published a hand-colored mezzotint after the composition on December 10, 1805, barely a month after news of Trafalgar reached England. By then, the true location of Nelson’s wound had become known, and Barnard removed the erroneous chest wound from his print. Drummond likewise corrected details as he returned to the subject over the following two decades, and his later versions omit the sword once it became known that Nelson had left it below deck. 

This important work established the composition that Drummond would repeatedly revisit and is almost certainly the Sketch for a death of Lord Nelson exhibited at the Royal Academy in the summer of 1806, catalogue number 505. Later treatments of Nelson’s death by Drummond now belong to major British public collections, including Royal Museums Greenwich, the Government Art Collection and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. 

Painted 1805

Canvas: 20 1/2" high x 24 3/8" wide (52.07 x 61.91 cm)
Frame: 28 1/2" high x 32 1/2" wide x 1 3/4" deep (72.39 x 82.55 x 4.45 cm)

Provenance:
Private collection, Somerset
Private collection, UK
M.S. Rau, New Orleans

Exhibited:
Almost certainly London, Royal Academy, 1806, Sketch for a death of Lord Nelson, no. 505