This is Landells’s apparently ad vivum sketch of Governor Sir Robert Stopford presenting the Nelson medals by E. Aven (see MEC1331), with 10 shillings each, to Greenwich Pensioners who had served in Nelson’s main actions: St Vincent, Tenerife, the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar. These medals were given to all known seamen survivors of the specified battles to mark the inauguration of the ‘Nelson Testimonial’ (i.e. Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, completed in 1844) in lieu of a cancelled proposal to hold a public banquet. The presentation of the medals took place on 2 April 1845 in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital and around 350 pensioners were honoured.

The drawing shows the western end of the Main Hall, looking up the steps into the Upper Hall, which is fenced off with iron railings. For the medal presentation, a large table was placed in front of these railings, flanked on either side by the union-jack and Admiralty flags. Seated around this table were the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and officers of Greenwich Hospital, as well as the members of the Testimonial Committee of the Parishioners of St Martin-in-the-Fields, who funded the production of the medals. Invited guests of the officers and committee members stood behind the table. In Landells’s sketch, an ex-seaman with a wooden leg stands in front of the table, receiving his medal.

The drawing was produced as the basis for a print in the Illustrated London News, for which Landells was a regular artist and woodblock engraver. The resulting print was published in the ILN on 12 April 1845 (p.240), alongside a descriptive account of the presentation and another illustration of the event. The latter was also based on an on-the-spot sketch by Landells; it showed the one-legged pensioner pictured in the present drawing processing up the length of the main hall between a guard of honour formed by students from the Naval Hospital School. A loose cut-out copy of this print is PAI8816.

The present drawing records the appearance of the Painted Hall in its incarnation as the National Gallery of Naval Art. Established in 1824, this gallery was housed in the Painted Hall until 1936, at which point the artworks were transferred to the National Maritime Museum on long-term loan, forming the nucleus of the museum’s art collection. By comparing this drawing with mid-nineteenth-century catalogues of the Naval Gallery collection, it is possible to recognise certain artworks from the museum collection in the background of the drawing. These include, on the far left, Francis Chantrey’s sculpted bust of William IV (SCU0064) and, above the flag on the right, an 18th-century portrait of Commodore Charles Brown (BHC2578). Immediately below the latter work and largely hidden by the flag is Dominic Serres’s ‘HMS Experiment taking the Telemaque, 19 July 1757’ (BHC03081).

The two loosely sketched portraits on far right are more difficult to identify. According to the gallery catalogue, the works displayed on the wall in question were Godfrey Kneller’s portrait of Sir Thomas Dilkes (BHC2659) and Serres’s ‘The Battle of Negapatam, 6 July 1782’ (BHC0448). However, while the upper picture in Landells’s drawing could conceivably represent Kneller’s portrait, the lower picture is a half-length portrait instead of Serres’s marine painting. This suggests either that the gallery’s displays occasionally varied from the arrangement published in the catalogue, or – more probably – that Landells exercised some artistic licence in his depiction of the gallery, particularly at the margins of the sketch.

Visible in the centre of the drawing, the rectangular pillar topped with a sculpture of a standing figure may be the “Model of the Nelson Monument” mentioned as being on display in the Upper Hall in Henry G. Clarke’s guidebook for visitors to the Naval Gallery, published in 1842. This model was apparently a temporary exhibit, since it was not mentioned in any later guidebooks. However, it is possible, even likely, that it remained on display at the time of the medal presentation, given that the event marked the completion of the Nelson Testimonial. For the same reason, it makes sense that Landells would choose to include the model in his depiction of the presentation. In February 1838, a group of peers, MPs and landowners formed a committee to raise a Nelson monument, funded by public subscription (the so-called ‘Nelson Testimonial’). The government agreed to provide a site for the monument in Trafalgar Square and a competition was held to design the monument. The winning entry was William Railton’s design for a tall Corinthian column, topped by a statue of Nelson. Representing a squat, rectangular pillar, rather than a thin, cyclindrical column, the model depicted in the drawing is probably one of the other designs entered in the competition.

Landells was born in Newcastle and trained as a wood-block engraver under Thomas Bewick. He was involved as advisor in the creation of the Illustrated London News, the first major British illustrated weekly magazine. Landells was the ILN’s first ‘artist reporter’ from its launch in 1842 to his death in 1860. The present drawing provides an insight into artistic process for the first major British illustrated weekly magazine.