The Foudroyant, commanded by Sir John Jervis, bringing the Pégase, a French 74, into Portsmouth

DOMINIC SERRES

1719-1793

English School

The Foudroyant, commanded by Sir John Jervis, bringing the Pégase, a French 74, into Portsmouth

Oil on canvas, signed and dated 179*

122.5 x 183.5 cms

48¼ x 721/4 ins

Exhibited Royal Academy 1793 no. 126

Literature: Alan Russet – Dominic Serres, R.A., 1719-1793; War Artist to the Navy (pages 148-151, 158, 210)

Provenance: 

John Jervis, Admiral of the Fleet and 1st Earl of St Vincent (1734-1823).
 Edward Jervis, 2nd Viscount St Vincent (1767-1859).
 Carnegie Robert Jervis, 3rd Viscount St Vincent (1825-1879).
 John Leveson Jervis, 4th Viscount St Vincent (1850-1885).
 Carnegie Parker Jervis, 5th Viscount St Vincent (1855-1908).
 Ronald Clarges Jervis, 6th Viscount St Vincent (1859-1940).
 Ronald James Jervis, 7th Viscount St Vincent (1905-2006).
 Edward Jervis, 8th Viscount St Vincent (1951-2023), and thence by descent 

In his book, Dominic Serres, R.A., 1719-1793; War Artist to the Navy, Alan Russet writes on page 149 about an earlier, un-exhibited painting of the same subject produced in 1782 which measures 30 x 44 inches. This painting is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. He states that: “The return to Portsmouth with a ship-of-the-line as a prize was an occasion for great celebration. Serres does full justice to the occasion by bringing the subject close to the picture plane, clearly showing the figurehead, and animating the scene with foreground figures. Serres’s second son, Dominique Michael, served briefly as an Able Seaman on Foudroyant during the summer of 1782.”

THE FOUDRAYANT AND PEGASE

The Pégase was captured by the Royal Navy in 21^st April 1782 in what became known as the third Battle of Ushant. This series of naval engagements between Britain and France was part of the American Revolutionary War with the two European super powers in conflict over influence and control of the Americas. Pégase was a 74-gun warship and in the painting it is apparent that she suffered damage in the battle having lost her topsails and with shot holes in the side. The King’s Colours fly above the white flag of surrender and the naval oarsmen in the boat abreast of the stern are carrying senior navy officers.

The 80-gun Foudrayant - a Third Rate vessel in that she carried between 64 and 80 guns arrayed over two decks - was ironically, also originally a French ship having been built at Toulon. It was designed by François Coulomb and was launched on18th December 1750 and saw action on several occasions before being captured by the British at the Battle of Cartagena on 28^th February 1758 off the coast of Spain while under the command of the Marquis de Quesne. It was towed to Gibraltar for repairs and then sailed to Portsmouth with the French crew on board who had survived the battle. Upon docking at Portsmouth, the French ordinary seamen were imprisoned in Porchester Castle, the officers in Maidstone except for the Marquis and other captains who were given more preferential treatment.

The Admiralty inspection approved the purchase of the ship on 6^th December 1758 for £16,759 19 shillings and eleven pence and she officially entered the service of the Royal Navy as HMS Foudrayant on 13th December. Following a six month refit in Portsmouth in 1759 at a cost of a further £14,218 nine shillings and tuppence she became the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Hardy and commanded by Captain Richard Tyrell. Between 1759 and 1775 she had several refits and different captains until in 1777 she was based in Plymouth commanded by John Jervis.

John Jervis, later Earl of St Vincent, (1735-1823) was born at Meaford Hall, Sone in Staffordshire, and was intended to follow his father’s profession of the law but became fascinated by ships and the   sea and entered the navy in 1749. He had little money to pay for his upkeep and lived on board ship in harsh conditions which instilled in him a steely determination. His privations and resolve imbued in him a character that expected others to have the same temperament and dedication that he had and his later command could appear harsh. 

Appointed a lieutenant in 1755, he distinguished himself in the 1759 Quebec expedition and was subsequently appointed a commander. He saw action off the French coast and patrolled the Channel until becoming commander of the naval part of the successful expedition against the French West Indies Islands in 1793. He was appointed an admiral in 1795 and received the command of the Mediterranean fleet. On 14^th February, with fifteen ships off Cape St Vincent, he engaged a Spanish fleet of twenty-seven and had a resounding victory with four ships captured as spoils of war. He was created Earl St Vincent in recognition of his service and was granted a pension of £3,000 by Parliament. He was compelled to return to England through ill-health and served as first lord of the Admiralty from 1801 to 1804 and put an end to many entrenched abuses.

Jervis’s command of the Foudrayant had commenced in1775 when he commissioned what was regarded at the time as the finest ship in the Royal Navy. In the action that saw the eventual taking of the Pégase in 1782, the engagement was comparatively rare for naval battles of the period. Warships at that time were designed to sail as fleets with the tactics to match but so superior were the Foudrayant and the Pégase that they soon left their accompanying ships astern and were left to engage in single combat. The chase lasted for twelve hours and the actual battle took fifty minutes until its conclusion. The Foudrayant outgunned her adversary, pounding the French ship with continuous broadsides before coming alongside whereupon the marines boarded her and enforced the surrender. Victory was due in large part to Jervis’s disciplinarian, highly drilled and ordered running of the ship which garnered plaudits and admiration and this, combined with his valour when continuing to command despite being wounded, earned him his knighthood.

On 24^th August 1787, the Admiralty issued an order for the Foudrayant to be decommissioned and for her subsequent breaking up. She was sold for £473 3 shillings and tuppence and the task was completed by 26^th September 1787.

DOMINIC SERRES

“Many are the obstacles to the attainment of a proficiency in drawing Marine subjects, particularly as it is not only requisite that a person desirous of excelling in this Art should possess a knowledge of the construction of a ship, or of what is denominated Naval Architecture together with the proportion of masts and yards, the width and cut of sails, &c; but he should likewise be acquainted with seamanship.” David Cordingly, writing in his Marine Painting in England 1700-1900, opens his Introduction to the book with this quote taken from Liber Nauticus by Dominic and John Thomas Serres which was published in 1805. He goes on to say that: “…(it) was an instruction manual in the art of marine drawing. This extract from the preface of the book is a good introduction to some of the problems which confronted the marine artist in the days of sail.”

Dominic Serres had spent some time at sea at a young age like other eminent marine artists of the time such as George Chambers, Nicholas Pocock and Clarkson Stanfield, and had grasped the intricacies of navigation which enabled his progress through the ranks and eventually to a command. The direct experiences of artists such as these gave them a valuable insight into interpreting their subject matter,

 He was born near Auch in Gascony in 1772, and came from a wealthy family and his uncle was the Archbishop of Rheims. When Dominic died in England in 1793, the obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine referred to him as Comte Serres. He was raised in his father’s country mansion at Beauperre and the fact that he had a great facility with English when he arrived is almost certainly due to the fact that he was sent to the renowned English Jesuit school at Douai. The family had planned for him to join the priesthood but to avoid this he ran away to Spain and once there then joined a ship bound for Havannah as a lowly crewman. His education and natural ability meant that he rose through the ranks and it was while master of a trading vessel in Cuban waters that he was captured by a British frigate and brought to England. The exact date of this is not known but believed to be “…during the war of 1752” according to S. Redgrave who wrote a dictionary of English artists in 1874. However, as there was no war in 1752 and as there is a recorded painting by Serres dated 1754, it is probable that Serres’ capture occurred during the War of the Austrian Succession (1741-1748) and Alan Russett in his biography of the artist puts it at 1745.

Before coming to London, Dominic Serres had resided in Northamptonshire - or more likely had served his military imprisonment there. However, it is not definitely known how he came to London but there is evidence that he was in the Marshalsea prison which would imply that he was a debtor but how these circumstances arose is also unclear. On 16^th July 1749 Serres married Mary Colldycutt in the chapel of St Bride’s. The officiator was the Rv. John Tarrant who was known to conduct what became known as the “Fleet marriages”, those that were often unions of convenience bypassing many of the church formalities. This certificate of marriage, not entered in the parish register but in Tarrant’s pocket book, cost 2 shillings and sixpence. Serres was probably still in prison at the time and there is a strong suggestion that Mary was the daughter of the gaoler and was pregnant. Her grandmother owned many wharves on the Thames near London Bridge. How Serres managed to settle his debts is also unclear but interestingly he is recorded as Painter on the marriage certificate.

His first son, John Thomas, who became a major marine painter was born in London in 1759 and in all his family included four daughters and another son Dominic who also became a marine artist. They eventually lived in St George’s Row in a house that overlooked Hyde Park. His other son, Dominique Michael, also became a marine artist.

The newly-weds moved to rented accommodation on old London Bridge before its demolition a few years later and it was a busy thoroughfare for an aspirant artist to sell his wares. However in 1752, whether because of poor sales of his works or a latent wanderlust, he signed on as master of a trading ship to Havana before returning to London and developing his skills for the remunerative print making market and public exhibitions that then precipitated the advancement of his career. 

Whether he was painting while young in France or had received any instruction there on the subject is unknown but having come to England he certainly got to know Charles Brooking (1723-1759), regarded as the most gifted and probably greatest English marine painter. Serres’ early work shows Brooking’s influence with a masterful ability to portray the fluctuating effects of light and shadow on the surface of the water and to imbue in the entire work an acute sensibility and subtlety of atmospheric effects. Serres definitely studied Brooking’s work and took advice from him but he may also have received a more formal training. E H H Archibald, in his Dictionary of Marine Painters of Europe and America says that: “His early works strained after the commercial market and are luminous calms with ships in romantic settings. However, once success came to him he adopted a more immediate approach to his subjects, painting them far more realistically.”

In his early career in the 1760s he was primarily a landscape painter, following a trend that was fashionable at that time and although he gravitated to marines later, he always included landscapes in his compositions if he could. Serres, like many others, was much influenced by the Dutch Golden Age marine painter Willem van der Velde the Younger (1633-1707) and Samuel Scott, JMW Turner and Serres all collected van der Velde’s paintings and drawings.

His technical ability, understanding of his subject matter, market exposure through the sale of prints and apparently a genial, charming and educated disposition combined to bring early success. His knowledge of ships and the sea enabled him to discuss ships and weather conditions at sea with wealthy naval patrons. In 1765 he became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists and in 1768 he was nominated as one of the founder members of the Royal Academy. This was a significant appointment as apart from being a Frenchman, he had become a professional artist comparatively late in life.

Serres had developed a close relationship with printmakers which was a shrewd step as prints were a way of disseminating artworks to a wider market and were a cheaper decorative purchase than paintings. His coastal scenes which displayed recognisable local topography were commercial and as increasingly he added more accurately rendered shipping to these, it was a natural progression to then concentrating on military operations and naval engagements around the world that involved the British Empire in which the public took a keen interest.

These naval prints soon brought him to the attention of senior figures in the Royal Navy and they were keen to promote their achievements and commemorate the ships that they had commanded in the permanent medium of paintings. Some of these eminent patrons included: Admiral Lord George Rodney, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, Sir John Jervis, Captain Hervey (Earl of Bristol), Captain William Locke, Admiral Lord Edward Hawke, Admiral Keppel and Admiral Sam Barrington.

As a consequence of his success and the demand for his works increased, Serres was often working to tight deadlines and he developed a technique to cope with this evidenced by his brushwork which displays rapid and vibrant paint application. He usually started a work by preparing his canvas with a beige primer followed by the application of a thin ground of pale brown and pink in strokes going diagonally from top left to bottom right and in some cases this layer was allowed to appear faintly in lighter area of sky. The rest of the sky was often painted quite thickly with a raised bright area of impasto to augment the effects of smoke and clouds which so enlivened his paintings. The sea was painted more sparingly giving it a more translucent appearance. It is also noticeable how dark the rigging stands out, a consequence of the artist’s confidence and the thickness of the paint.

Serres became the most successful British painter of the naval actions of the Seven Years War and of the American War of Independence and they have become important historical documents on account of their accuracy to actual events, often more so than the written documents of the time. He made use of topographical prints made by engravers such as R Short who had visited the overseas locations that were the setting of many of his naval scenes. His renown grew to such an extent that his friend, the major watercolour artist Paul Sandby, wrote to a companion that: “But Dom is grown a very great man, has been to Paris, seen the grand exhibition, dined with the King’s architect, and is going to paint for the Grand Monarque. Alas! Poor patron, hide your diminished head, your topsails are lowered.” 

 He was appointed marine painter to George III and there is an account of Serres being offered a knighthood by the King but reputedly he refused it on the grounds that it was only a baronetcy and in his native France he would have been entitled to be known as Marquis. In 1792 became Librarian to the Royal Academy, a post for which he seemed the ideal candidate as “…he spoke English with fluency, was a good Latin and Italian scholar, and was tolerably well versed in French, Spanish and Portuguese.”

From 1769 until his death on 6^th November 1793, Serres exhibited 108 works at the Royal Academy, eleven at the Society of Artists between 1765 and 1768 and twenty-one at the Free Society between 1761 and 1764. A small half-length portrait of him by Philip Jean was itself exhibited in the RA in 1788 and depicts the artist seated in a chair before his easel, adding some touches to a marine work. There is only one known portrait by Serres, now in the Yale Center for British Art, and this is a half-length of Captain William Locker painted in 1769 and shows the officer in uniform standing in a cabin with a view to his ship beyond.

Other examples of paintings include: A view of the Cape of Good Hope with a British squadron returning from the East Indies; An engagement by moonlight; The Plymouth Squadron commanded by Lord Edgcombe, Vice-Admiral of the White; Sailing from Spithead towards St Helens, with his Majesty on board the Augusta yacht; A view of Fort St George, Madras, and the arrival of Admiral Cornish from the Manillas with a Spanish prize; His Majesty’s ship the Phoenix, Capt. Parker, the Roebuck, Capt. Hammond, the Tartar, Capt. Ommaney, forcing their way through the chevaux de frize, the forts Washington and Lee, and several batteries up the North River, New York, October 9, 1776, A bird’s eye view of the action on the 12^th of April, 1782, between the English and French fleets; The destruction of the floating batteries at Gibraltar; A view of the Spanish men of war, frigates, and galleons, in the harbor of the Havannah at the reduction of the place, with a view of the Moro-Castle at the mouth of the harbor; Lord Rodney conveying the Ville de Paris into Port Royal, Jamaica;A view of Halifax in Nova Scotia, taken from the Citadel-hill, looking down Prince Street; A view on the River Exe, near Powderham Castle, in Devonshire; A view of Stonehenge; A landscape with the story of Diana and Acteon and A view of Warwick Castle.

Serres’ paintings are very well represented in the collections of museums and art galleries and include: National Maritime Museum (45); Royal Academy; Victoria and Albert Museum (4); Tate Gallery; Fitzwilliam Museum (6); Courtauld; Government Art Collection (7); Royal Collection (9); National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth; Royal Marines Museum; Leeds Museum and Galleries; Bradford Museum and Galleries; Shipley Art Gallery; Grundy Art Gallery; Hampshire Cultural trust, Winchester; Hackney Museum; Harris Museum and Art Gallery; Colchester and Ipswich Museums; Bolling Hall; Eton College; Aberystwyth Art Museum; University of Edinburgh; National Trust: Waddesdon Manor; Melford Hall (7); Ickworth (5); Angelsey Abbey; Montacute; Art Gallery of South Australia; Yale Center for British Art (4), Harvard University Art Gallery; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick.

Bibliography:

Dominic Serres R.A. 1719-1793; War Artist to the Navy – Alan Russett

John Thomas Serres: The Tireless Enterprise of a Marine Artist – Alan Russet

Dictionary of Sea Painters of Europe and America – E H H Archibald

Dictionary of British Landscape Painters - M H Grant

Dictionary of British Marine Painters - Arnold Wilson

Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters - Ellis Waterhouse