Profile portrait of Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson in charcoal and red chalk (sanguine)

This charcoal and red chalk portrait of Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was made in Palermo, during his stay in the city from December 1798 to June 1800. In The Nelson Portraits (1998), Richard Walker dates the portrait to early 1799, a date which is supported by the paper watermark of 1796. It is one of two portraits made from life by an unknown Palermo artist. This one was given as a personal gift to one of his closest companions, Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, and the other was sent by Emma Hamilton to Nelson’s sister-in-law. Several well-known portraits of him were made during his stay in Italy, which was in part a period of convalescence following the Battle of the Nile. Many of these portraits show him “emaciated by wounds and illness after the Nile,” as Walker describes, but none of his battle injuries are shown here. Instead, his naval honors are displayed prominently. This includes his newly-acquired Chelengk, given to him by Grand Sultan Selim III (although erroneously depicted with only seven spokes), the Ottoman Order of the Crescent and the Order of the Bath, as well as the two gold Naval medals worn around his neck and the Davison Nile medal from his buttonhole. Nevertheless, this is a distinctly human depiction of Nelson and one taken from life. It the original for the Thomas Burke stipple engraving, published by John Brydon on 1 August 1800 (PAG6681, PAG9371, PAH4332, PAI7630).

Other commentators have suggested that the artist has depicted Nelson in an Italianate style and that there is a lack of continuity between this and other depictions. While this is overstated in the literature, there is a sense of classicism in the profile depiction (unusual in portraits of Nelson), which shows off an aquiline, or Roman, nose and a prominent brow.
As a gift to Hardy, the portrait is an emblematic of the close friendships developed between men while at sea. Hardy was close friend and flag captain to Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the man who held and kissed him as he was dying. The men had first encountered one another while serving on Minerve in 1796. Following the Battle of the Nile in 1798, Nelson promoted Hardy from commander of the brig Mutine to his flag captain on Vanguard. This is contemporaneous to this portrait being made and gifted, Hardy being in Italy with Nelson. Family tradition claims that Nelson even provided Hardy with instructions on how to frame the portrait (which may be referred to in the Italian inscription on the reverse: “you need white paper behind the portrait”).
By tradition, a drawing of King Ferdinand IV of Naples and III of Sicily (1751-1825) in the same style and likely by the same artist was found in the back of the frame of thin Nelson portrait. Nelson’s time in Naples and Sicily was significant and complex, in both his career and his personal life. He arrived with the King and Queen of Naples and Sicily, as well as Lady Emma and her husband Sir William Hamilton, the ambassador to Naples, having assisted in their escape from French and Neapolitan Republican forces. While this is not the first time that Emma Hamilton and Nelson met, this extended period together in Naples and then Palermo was when their romantic relationship started. It was also in this period that Nelson’s strong professional association with the Neapolitan royal family was fortified, after King Ferdinand granted him the Dukedom of Bronte in gratitude for his assistance in suppressing a revolution. On behalf of the Neapolitan King and Queen, Nelson had overturned a treaty of surrender brokered between royalist forces and the revolutionaries by Royal Navy Captain Edward Foote which gave the rebels safe passage to France. Nelson intercepted this escape, leading to a campaign of public executions of prominent and suspected revolutionaries. Nelson’s actions in Naples are one of the few instances in which he drew significant criticism. In parliament, Charles James Fox accused him of participating in an atrocity. And his biographer, Robert Southey, described the events as “a deplorable transaction, a stain on the memory of Nelson and upon the honour of England.”