This sensitive sketch is one of Burnet’s studies of old seamen for a painting of 1837 called ‘Greenwich Pensioners and Naval Heroes’, which was exhibited at the British Institution in 1837. It shows Pensioners celebrating the anniversary of Trafalgar in Greenwich Park and was painted speculatively to complement David Wilkie’s ‘Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo dispatch’, which was owned by the Duke of Wellington, who also bought Burnet’s picture. Both are hanging in Apsley House, and the NMM holds a print of the completed Burnet picture (PAI1598). Handyson had once served in the ‘Donegal’.