Napoleon Bonaparte on 'Bellerophon' in Plymouth Sound, 1815 and 1816

Between July 15 and August 4, 1815, HMS Bellerophon was home to the defeated Napoleon Bonapart in the immediate aftermath of his surrender, as Britain decided what to do with him. The occasion was the cause of numerous works of art, including an oil painting by Charles Lock Eastlake that shows Napoleon in a full-length portrait, and another painting of the crowds who swarmed Plymouth Sound in late July and early August for a glimpse of the defeated emperor.

Napoleon Bonaparte on Board the 'Bellerophon' in Plymouth Sound

Oil on canvas. Charles Lock Eastlake, 1815. Royal Museums Greenwich.

After Bellerophon arrived in Plymouth Sound, Napoleon usually appeared in the afternoon around 6 pm so that the numerous boats filled with sightseers could catch a glimpse of him. It was on one of these occasions that Eastlake was able to make a few rapid sketches from life to create the portrait.

Scene in Plymouth Sound in August 1815

Oil on canvas. John James Chalon, 1816. Royal Museums Greenwich.

The painting includes several other figures: behind Napoleon to the right is Général Comte Bertrand, and to the left is Captain Piontowski. The group is completed by a British marine in profile to the right of Napoleon, and a sailor below looking up at him.

As Royal Museums Greenwich notes,

The painting was enormously popular when it was exhibited at No.236 Piccadilly in 1815, and although based on the eyewitness account of Eastlake when a young man, the end result is heavily contrived. Several certificates were issued to testify to the true resemblance of the painting to Napoleon from which Charles Turner created a well-known mezzotint from another version of the painting. The exhibition and the print both made Eastlake's name and earned him a considerable sum.

Charles Turner's 1816 mezzotint omits the other men in Eastlake's painting in favor of focusing on Napoleon, but Eastlake's detailed reproduction of a sailor in the lower left corner is particularly interesting to this blog.

The sailor wears a thin striped blue and white guernsey frock over a white shirt, the cuffs and collar of which are visible at his neck and wrists. Around his neck he also wears a black handkerchief. He wears white trousers or breeches, which lace up in the back and have a pocket that closes with a wooden button.

Another interesting detail in this painting is the hammock stowed in the upper right corner, which shows some details of construction and tricing, and a sailor's watch number stenciled on it in brown.

Chalon's 1816 painting also includes a few interesting sailors, though the details are hard to see in the reproduction quality I was able to find online.

One sailor in a striped blue and white guernsey frock stands on the bow of a ship, a red handkerchief loosely tied around his neck at the sternum and the ends hanging out. He also wears blue trousers. I couldn't quite make it out, but it looked to me like he is wearing some kind of cap.

Note: This detail is taken from Wikimedia commons, not RMG.

Two men rowing a boat wear striped shirts and white-backed vests. One wears a striped red and white cap, and the other wears a black round hat.

Marine Dabblers, 1808 and 1811

Today we return to the marine art of JMW Turner in the collection of the Tate with scene from the first decade of the 19th century, done first as a watercolor in 1808 and later issued as a engraving in 1811. In the foreground young boys play in the surf next to a boat run up on the shore, contrasted to the adult fishermen in the background. To quote the Tate's catalog entry, "The anxiety of the child at the loss of a toy in the shallows foreshadows the dangers of setting out in real boats, to which the men shown in the background are accustomed".

I've avoided featuring images of watermen or coastal fishermen because there are sartorial differences between them and bluewater sailors, but the lure of Turner was once again too much for me: not only does the Tate have Turner's original watercolor, but both the preliminary outline etching and the final published version of this print survive, with the final, published print engraved by a different artist.

Together these three images show subtle differences in the interpretation of the sailor's clothing in the scene, and a useful lesson on the over-reliance on an artist's brush-strokes or etching-lines when studying clothing.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1808

This is Turner's original watercolor, completed in 1808. The sketch was done in Indian Red pigment as a series of washes, with some washing-out used for the figures. The four boys play in the surf at the foreground, and off to the right are the two adults that grabbed my interest.

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1808

It's a little difficult to tell what the men are wearing because of the nature of the washes; the figure on the left standing in the surf half-turned to the viewer appears to be wearing a striped knit cap, a light-colored shirt with full sleeves, petticoat breeches, and a bulk leg covering that look like trousers. The figure on the right, with his back pushed up against the boat, wears a cap, white shirt, light-colored waistcoat, and slops over some sort of leg covering.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Next I turn to Turner's preliminary etching, which offers more clarity in the sharp lines of an etched plate but less detail in terms of shading and some of the garments, but the leg-coverings of the men now look like gaiters worn over breeches.

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Finally I turn to the published engraving, which was engraved by another artist, William Say. This bears much more similarity to the original watercolor due to its shading, but even more detail in the sailor's clothes.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Both knit caps look striped, and the sailor on the left's petticoat breeches look horizontally striped. The detail of the gaiters over the breeches is largely lost.

Although this post is perhaps not extremely interesting from the perspective of the costume historian, I nonetheless enjoyed seeing Turner's artistic process, especially when the process gives me insight into studying sailor's clothing in art.