Overall: 23cm (9in) x 33cm (13in)
Watercolour and gouache on paper. Titled to the reverse 'Commodore Keppel Leading Attack on Chinese Junks in Fatshan Creek 1857’. Attributed to Sir Oswald Walters Brierly Kt (1817-1894), Marine Painter to Queen Victoria. Sheet: 18cm x 28cm.
The present watercolour depicts an attack of Chinese naval forces in 1857 during the Second Opium War. The First Opium War ended with treaties designed to open China to western trade, but the United States and Britain became dissatisfied and returned in October 1856 to force more favourable terms with shock and awe. Accordingly the first objective of the British commander, Rear-Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, was to destroy the Qing battle fleet before advancing on Canton.
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On 1 June 1857 four gunboats and two hired steamers towed the Seymour’s boats 3 miles up the Pearl River, to where a large fleet of Chinese junks was moored across Fatshan Creek. Admiral Seymour took the fort on the southern bank by infantry assault, while Commodore Henry Keppel steamed ahead. Seymour’s gunboats exchanged fire with the Chinese junks and grounded on mudbanks, but the ships’ boats were sent forward and the junks were boarded before the Chinese could reload to repel the attack. Keppel ordered the junks to be burned, then continued upstream. The British boats grounded again 1200ft from another body of junks, forcing them to retreat and attack again when the tide was higher. Faced with further British attacks, the surviving Chinese vessels fled upriver towards the village of Fatshan.
Sir Henry Keppel (1809-1904), son of the 4th Earl of Albemarle, joined the Royal Navy in 1822. He was educated at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. He held a number of assignments, most of them in Asia and the Pacific. He fought in the First Opium War (1839-1842), and later served at Singapore, Borneo, and other parts of East Asia, subduing local pirates. He was so revered in Singapore that its harbour was named for him. In the early 1850s Keppel again battled pirates in Borneo and Sumatra. He served in the Baltic and Black Sea during Crimean War, especially around the Sevastopol in 1854. In 1856 he returned to the Far East as commodore of the China Station. He commanded British forces in the Battle of Fatshan Creek, in which 70 Chinese junks were destroyed. During 1867- 1869 he commanded a seven-nation force that finally ended piracy in Chinese coastal waters and throughout most of East Asia and the Pacific.
Sir Oswald Walters Brierly, Kt, FRGS (1817-1894) was born in Cheshire and trained at Sass’s Academy in Bloomsbury for artists aspiring to the Royal Academy Schools. He also studied naval architecture and later accompanied the Admiralty surveys of Australia’s north and east coasts. In 1850 he was invited by Captain the Hon Henry Keppel to join an extended cruise to New Zealand, the Pacific and South America in HMS Maeander. During the Crimean war he further accompanied Keppel in HMS St Jean d'Acre, and and sent home sketches for publication in the Illustrated London News. A tinted lithograph of Keppel’s attack at Fatshan Creek based on the present watercolour was produced by Edmund Walker for the publisher Day & Son, with the caption ‘Fatshan Creek’ / The Raleigh’s gig sinking and the crew disabled …. Commodore Keppel shaking his fist at the enemy ….’ In 1863, he accompanied the minor royal Count Gleichen to Norway in HMS Racoon, and afterwards was attached to his Prince Alfred’s suite when on a cruise in the Mediterranean Sea and afterwards round the world in HMS Galatea. In 1882 he was appointed marine painter to Queen Victoria following the death of John Christian Schetky. He became marine painter to the Royal Yacht Squadron. In 1880, he was elected a full member of the Royal Watercolour Society and 1881, he was appointed curator of the Painted Hall at Greenwich.