(Updated October 2020) This picture is in the Greenwich Hospital Collection and still has its original Naval Gallery 'tablet' labels, the one at the top of the frame naming the donor to the Hospital as 'William Tennant of Staffordshire', 1829. This was William Tennant (1783-1835), whose family home at the time was Little Aston Hall in east Staffordshire.

The Tennants are known to have had a number of sea pieces by Paton (d. 1791) before 1800, at least two of which went on to their later home of St Anne's Manor near Loughborough in the 1860s. How and why they had them is not clear since none of the family served in the 18th-century Navy, but they did have family portraits painted by the best artists of their day. William's parents were painted by Gainsborough and he was painted by Hudson, Reynolds and Romney, the last showing him as a child in 1789 in the small full-length sometimes called 'Romney's 'blue boy'.

The present painting (BHC0443) is one of two of the Tennant Patons presented to Greenwich Hospital as a pair in 1829: the other is of Rodney's Moonlight Action of 1780 off Cape St Vincent, against Langara's Spanish fleet (BHC0429). The gift is recorded in the first volume of GH Commissioners' minutes after the Hospital's change of governance in 1829 (ADM67/81, 6 Oct. 1829, pp. 248-49): 'Read a letter from the Governor [ Admiral Sir Richard Keats]....that William Tennant Esqr had desired, through him, to present to the Naval Gallery of the Hospital, two large sized original Paintings by Paton, descriptive of Lord Rodney's actions; one of the defeat of the French Fleet on the 12th of April 1782, when the Compte de Grasse was made Prisoner - the other of the defeat and capture of Don Juan de Langara on the 16th January 1780'. The Board ordered thanks to be extended to the donor and the pictures placed in the Gallery. The Saints picture does not appear in the last edition of the Naval Gallery catalogue (1922) but is now known to have been in the Admiral President's House at about that time, which explains the omission.

Until 2011 a duplicate record of it as GH61 5005 on the Hospital database, and the fact that Paton engraved both this image and another of the Saints which appears to be its compositional pair, caused some confusion that there might be a third unlocated canvas. The Board minute above makes it clear, however, that Tennant only present two paintings, respectively this one (GH61) and that of the Moonlight Action (GH123) and that both came to the Museum as part of the original GH loan arrangement of 1936.

For Paton's engraving of the present composition see PAI6045. The other Saints print, showing the breaking on the line is PAI6047: both were published on 1 May 1783. Assuming BHC0443 was the canvas done for engraving, rather than being another version, it looks like an original Saints pair was subequently split and this one joined up with one of the Langara action (which may also have once had another pendant). The present composition - but again probably from a copy of the print - is the basis of the contemporary 'dioramic' model of the Battle of the Saints formerly in the Rodney collection, now NMM MDL0011.

The photograph here is just for audit record purposes: a better one (excluding the frame of the painting) can be found on the Art UK website.