Two Greenwich Pensioners with a female companion beside Rysbrack’s statue of George II.

A view looking south between the Queen Mary Court and King William Court buildings of Greenwich Hosptal towards the Queen's House, with the (second) rigged training ship of the Hospital School in front. In the foreground a Greenwich Pensioner stands looking up at Rysbrack’s statue of George II (1735), with another pensioner and female companion seated next to him. She may be one of the Hospital nurses, generally widows of seamen, who were the only women housed in the Hospital other than its officers' families. The surface of the walk below the wooden bench on which they are sitting is gravel, not the present York stone probably first installed after the Hospital became the Royal Naval College from 1873. The top of the Royal Observatory building is in the far distance above the tree line.

Object Details

ID: P3CAL
Type: Calotype negative
Display location: Not on display
Creator: Talbot, William Henry Fox; Jones, Calvert Richard
Date made: Circa 1845
Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Fox Talbot Collection
Measurements: Overall: 217 mm x 176 mm