Overall: 61cm (24in) x 85cm (33.5in)
A pair of hand coloured aquatints. Depiction of the defeat of the Danish fleet and batteries off Copenhagen the second of April 1801, with title dedication below the image ‘To Admiral Sir Hyde Parker … Vice Admiral Lord Nelson and Rear Admiral Tho. Greaves, / The Captains, Officers, Seamen, Marines and Soldiers of the British Fleet’, with names of the ships, and production details ‘Painted by I T Serres Marine Painter to His Majesty, His R.H. the Duke of Clarence & Marine Draftsman to the Right Honourable the Board of Authority’, ‘Engraved in aqua-tinta by P W Tomkins, Historical Engraver to his Majesty’/ ‘London Pub. as the Act Directs July 4 1801 by P W Tomkins No. 49 New Bond Street’. Contained in Hogarth style frames.
The scene of Nelson’s famous act of insubordination, when as second-in-command of the British fleet at Copenhagen in the 74-gun battleship Elephant, he put his spyglass to his blind eye and said to Elephant’s captain, the future Admiral Sir Thomas Foley, ‘I really do not see the signal.’ The signal was from his commanding admiral, Sir Hyde Parker, ordering him to disengage and Nelson, who thought Parker out of touch, had no intention whatever of obeying it.