(Updated, September 2021) Peter Monamy was one of the first English artists to continue the tradition of Willem van de Velde the Younger’s marine painting into the 18th century and his work is representative of the early British school of maritime art, which still shows an overwhelming influence of the Dutch style. Monamy was self-taught, but may have worked in van de Velde’s studio in Greenwich.

This is a dramatic night scene in the van de Velde tradition. The100-gun 'Victory', launched at Portsmouth in 1737 was predecessor of Nelson's surviving flagship of that name (which was launched at Chatham in 1765) and was recognized in its day as ‘the finest ship in the world’. It was lost with all hands in the English Channel in 1744, after becoming separated from the rest of ithe English fleet in a gale while returning from relieving the blockade of Admiral Sir Charles Hardy in the Tagus. About 1200 people reportedly died, including the 74-year-old squadron commander, Admiral Sir John Balchen (see BHC2525).The ship was long thought to have been wrecked on the Caskets, near the island of Alderney, but its remains were eventually located in 2009, in 75 metres of water 62 miles south-east of Plymouth, so it may just have foundered in the bad weather.

In the painting, which is portrait format, the solitary vessel is going down with lanterns alight and firing two of her guns – their light eerily mirrored by the moonlight streaming down from behind the dark storm clouds in the sky. The painting could be seen as an early visual example of the 18th-century taste for the sublime.