A print taken from the 1808 painting by West, ‘The Death of Lord Nelson in the Cockpit of the Ship “Victory” ’ (BHC0566), showing the scene in the cockpit during the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805. It was commissioned by John McArthur as a plate for the biography he wrote with James Stanier Clarke, ‘The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson, KB’, 1809 and was engraved by Richard Goulding.

The narrative combines portraiture of the principal figures and the conventions of history painting to show Nelson’s dying moments. Draped in a white sheet he is shown in profile and lies propped on pillows on the right of the picture, left side visible. His shirt is ripped open. The emphasis on Nelson’s pallor evokes neo-classical funerary statuary. Figures are arranged around the death scene. On the right Walter Burke, the purser, is seated in the foreground in left profile, supporting Nelson’s pillows. Behind Nelson, in left profile, the head and shoulders of Dr William Beatty, the senior surgeon on board the ‘Victory’, are visible with his right hand holding a handkerchief around the wound. His assistant surgeon, Neil Smith, is shown full-face beside him to the left, straining forward to hear Nelson’s dying words. Beyond is Dr Alexander Scott, the chaplain, leaning over Nelson to support his head. Shown in right profile bending forward in front of Nelson, and holding his left hand, is the ‘Victory’s’ captain, Captain Hardy.

Standing to the left against the bulkhead and shown nearly full-face, is William Chevailler, Nelson’s steward, holding his master’s coat and breeches. To the left of him, right profile, (in a red coat) is Gaetano Spedillo, Nelson’s valet. They are both facing towards Nelson. In the left foreground is a stanchion with two lanterns, which provide the only light on the scene. The light from the lanterns illuminates Nelson and highlights the clothing of the onlookers. Standing in the shadows, William Bunce, the carpenter, leans against the pillar, in right-side view with his left arm around it. He holds a hammer in his right hand with a bundle of plugs and oakum suspended from his shoulder. The carpenter’s mate is shown in the foreground next to him, stepping over a coil of cables with his back to the viewer. Beyond them, in the left background, a wounded midshipman is carried below deck by two sailors.

Produced several years after the event, the image concentrates on the human response of the men involved in this important event in the life of the nation. The drama draws on the narrative of Renaissance religious imagery to evoke a pieta, or lamentation over Christ’s body removed from the Cross. The artist invites such comparison, for example, by showing blood on Nelson and replacing the base of the Cross with the stanchion, which suggests it. West has thus incorporated portraiture with the imagery of Renaissance religious painting. Nelson is bathed in a golden light in contrast with the gloom of the rest of the enclosed, below-deck scene, intentionally framed by the curve of the bulkhead and the swathe of curtain, top right. It intentionally concentrates on the tragedy of the moment to evoke a response from the viewer.

West gained great popular acclaim in 1806 with his large painting the ‘Death of Lord Nelson’ 1806. In this he represented it as an ‘epic composition’ on the quarter-deck of the ‘Victory’, rejecting the realism of showing it in ‘the gloomy hold of a ship’ and criticizing Arthur Devis for doing so in his version, then in progress.