COLLECTING:
The nation is still enthralled by the public and private life of the naval hero who died at Trafalgar.
HIS is the face of Britain’s greatest naval hero, Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson. In fact, it is the last professional portrait of him drawn from life, sketched just weeks before his death at the moment of his most glorious victory, at Trafalgar in October 1805.
And at Sotheby’s in London the pastelon-paper by John Whichelo, a promising marine artist who visited Lord Nelson at his home at Merton, south west London, the previous month, fetched £64,900. It is perhaps not surprising that the price far exceeded its £20,000-£30,000 estimate – for anything connected with the man who did more than any other to ensure that Britain ruled the waves for the next century has the magic touch at auction.
Some of the material which has surfaced in recent years is fascinating – such as the 16 weekly household accounts which sold for £7,500 and uncovered details of the unusual domestic arrangements at Merton, where the admiral, Sir William Hamilton and his wife, Emma, lived in the most famous ménage a trois in history.
The accounts revealed that Nelson and Sir William each paid half of the staggering cost of running the house. A bill for one month alone was for over £156 – worth £123,000 today – a fair chunk of it on Lady Hamilton’s weakness for oysters.
The most expensive items to emerge at auction include the blood-spattered purse carried at the moment of his death (£270,650), the admiral’s scimitar (£336,650), the Naval Gold Medal awarded to his trusted right hand man, Captain Thomas Hardy, after Trafalgar (£248, 800), a charcoal drawing of the head of Lady Hamilton (£353,000), pair of paintings by Robert Dadd of victory at Trafalgar (£270,650) and the tattered Union Flag which flew from HMS Spartiate at Trafalgar (a world record £384,000).
Letters penned by Nelson command hefty prices but collectors are attracted by even comparatively mundane items, such as a copy of the first newspaper to carry news of his victory and death (£9,400), his schoolboy textbook (£19,200), a threeinch scrap of timber from HMS Victory (£500), a document which revealed he fiddled his parliamentary expenses by posting too many free letters from the House of Lords (£3,750) and a lock of greying hair snipped from his head after death (£3,840).
A final word on the John Whichelo portrait. Nelson spent 25 days of leave at Merton before hoisting his flag on Victory for the last time. Whichelo kept the portrait until 1838 when he gave it to one of Lord Nelson’s old shipmates, Admiral Sir William Parker, whose son he was teaching to draw.