Overall: 52cm (20.5in) x 45cm (17.7in)
Pen, ink and watercolour. A striking portrait of Admiral Brueys, depicted full-length on the quarterdeck of his flagship 'L’Orient', in the manner of illustrator and social commentator Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845). Titled in ink twice beneath the image ‘L’ Admiral Brueys’, and dated ‘1798’, and further dated ‘9 ieme année de la Republique’ (1798). Image size: 15in (38cm) x 12.5in (32cm). Framed and glazed.
Vice-Admiral François-Paul Brueys d’Aigaillers, Comte de Brueys (1753-1798) was an aristocrat from Languedoc. He entered the French Navy in 1766, served in the War of American Independence, became Captain in 1792. He was temporarily suspended during the political upheavals of the early years of the Revolutionary Wars, but was reinstated and as Contre-amiral and captured the Ionian Islands in 1796.
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Promoted to Vice-Admiral in 1798, he was appointed to the command of the naval forces in Bonaparte’s Egyptian Expedition. The fleet comprised the formidable L’Orient, 118-guns, his flagship, 13 ships of the line, seven frigates and a number of other warships to protect some 300 transports. Despite having a number of highly regarded officers with him, including Rear Admiral Villeneuve, who would meet Nelson again at Trafalgar, Brueys was far from confident. In a letter to the French Minister of Marine he noted, ‘Our crews are very weak both in numbers and the quality of the men. Our ships are, in general, ill-armed …’ He estimated that he was short 2000 men and those aboard were ‘composed of men picked up at hazard and almost at the moment of sailing.’
Brueys reached Egypt and disbarked troops in early July but found he was unable to get his biggest ships over the bar into Alexandria, accordingly they were anchored in Aboukir Bay where Nelson discovered them on 1 August 1798. Not long after battle was joined, Brueys was severely wounded with both legs shattered. Nevertheless he refused to be taken below, remarking that a French admiral should die on his quarterdeck. He was subsequently was killed by a roundshot from HMS Swiftsure. Shortly afterwards, L’Orient was destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion so violent the battle paused for twenty minutes. Bruey's son had been told by his father to stay nearby and, after his father perished remained at his post until he too succumbed. The incident was immortalised in the poem ‘Casabianca ‘by Felicia Dorothea Hemans - ‘The boy stood on the burning deck…’