Robert Dodd

(British, 1748-1816)

A squadron of the Red at Spithead, waiting for a breeze

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection, UK.
Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 22 June 1973, lot 29.
With Richard Green, London, 1973.
Private collection, UK, 1974.
Purchased from the above by the present owner in 2008.

Robert Dodd was one of the principal recorders of naval actions in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars. He engraved over a hundred of his paintings in aquatint, bringing his work to a wide audience. Dodd combined meticulous attention to the details of shipping with an ability to capture atmosphere, either in the heat of battle or, as here, in a beautiful calm scene.

Dodd depicts a squadron of the Red at Spithead, the most important naval anchorage in Britain, where Nelson's fleet was to set off for his last journey in 1803. In the right distance are the fortifications of Portsmouth. Dodd's bright, clear palette gives great depth and airiness to the painting. The sunlit Solent is glassy and the squadron lies at anchor, waiting for a breeze. Clouds spiral into the sky and silver-grey distances evoke the moisture-laden atmosphere.

At foreground left a seventy-four gun, third-rate man of war, wearing the broad pendant of a Vice-Admiral of the Red at the fore, is saluting. The decks are crowded with sailors and marines, depicted by Dodd with fluent little flicks of the brush. In the centre middleground are two graceful men of war seen starboard broadside on and, to the right, a first-rate, three-decker wearing a flag at the main. In the right foreground, the sails of a naval cutter make an elegant repoussoir against the pink-tinged sky; her long commissioning pendant wafts in the light air. The power and confidence of the British Navy pervades the scene and would have gladdened the hearts of viewers in those decades of war against the French.

The information on the ships was kindly provided by John Munday, former curator at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.