The Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, from the Vestibule

(Updated, May 2016) A sizeable pencil drawing of the Vestibule of the Painted Hall, with a view up to the larger main hall (the Lower Hall). The drawing is signed and dated 1830 (lower right), and was made six years after the opening of the National Gallery of Naval Art in the Hall – the original and most significant display of the Greenwich Hospital Collection. It remained open, steadily enlarging, until 1936 when all but a handful of the works displayed in the Hall, and a others elsewhere in the Hospital, were transferred to the care of the new National Maritime Museum across the road. The Hall was subsequently restored to pre-Gallery condition by 1939.

Several of the paintings depicted in the drawing are identifiable, providing partial evidence of the hang around 1830, especially in the Vestibule, of which it is the only known accurate representation at this date. They include de Loutherbourg's 'Battle of 1 June 1794' (BHC0470) and Turner's 'Trafalgar' (BHC0565) in their original positions (left and right) after receipt in the Gallery by gift of George IV in August 1829. Immediately identifiable portraits, in order left to right, are: far left, Alexander Hood, Lord Bridport by Reynolds (BHC2573); Anson by Reynolds (BHC2516) and Cook by Dance (BHC2628) immediately left and right of the stairs, and probably the Thornhill of John Warley (BHC3102) and the Greenhill of John Clements (BHC2613) on the wall beyond the Turner. The naval flags hanging above are captured enemy ones originally hung there (fate not now certain). The table on the left, still in Hospital possession (on loan to the Old Royal Naval College), is thought to be that formerly in the record room off the Upper Hall on which Nelson's coffin was first placed in December 1805 before his lying in state there, 6–8 January 1806.

Note that there are no stairs down to the undercroft in the blind corners of the Vestibule. These were only inserted in the late 1930s restoration of the Hall). The Turner also hangs over the north door, which was walled up for the purpose. Both this and the de Loutherbourg were hung further up the walls by 1838, with other pictures beneath, and moved to become centrepieces of, respectively, the south and north walls of the main Lower Hall in the major rehang of 1845–46. Davis has also omitted – probably because obstructing the record he intended – the four large plaster statue casts of Nelson, Howe, Jervis and Duncan (from their monuments in St Paul's) which flanked these pictures in the vestibule from their delivery, in pairs, over the period 1824–26.

In 1831 he exhibited a large oil painting of 'The Painted Hall, Greenwich' at the British Institution (no. 153), probably based on this drawing and which appears to have been lot 88 in the John Hinxman sale at Christie's, 25 March 1848: it is now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and includes the plaster-cast statues of Howe (left) and Nelson (right) in front of the pillars flanking the stairs to the Lower Hall. Davis did a number of other Greenwich studies at about the same time as this: PAH3995 is a similar-sized matching one, slightly less finished, of the Hospital Chapel interior. He may have used a camera lucida for both, and the present one has a number of pin holes possibly used in constructing the composition.

Object Details

ID: ZBA5005
Type: Drawing
Display location: Not on display
Creator: Davis, John Scarlett
Places: London
Date made: 1830
Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Measurements: Frame: 652 mm x 654 mm x 22 mm
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