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Cooper Willyams: Watercolours of the Mediterranean
Framed: 16 in (41cm) x 20 ½ in (52cm)
‘Aboukir Castle when occupied by Napleon’s Army Aug. 12th 1798’ watercolour by Cooper Willyams. ‘A voyage up the Mediterranean in his Majesty’s ship the Swiftsure, one of the squadron under the command of RearAdmiral Sir Horatio Nelson with a description of the battle of the Nile, on the first of August 1798.’ Dedicated on the second page ‘To the Right Honourable John, Earl of Saint Vincent, Viscount Saint Vincent and Baron Jervis, First Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty …this work is with the greatest respect dedicated and inscribed by his Lordship’s most humble and obedient servant Cooper Willyams.’ Printed by T. Bensley, Bolt Court, for J. White, Horace’s Head, Fleet Street. 1st ed., 1802. Quarto. Xxiv + 309 pp., with 43 aquatint plates including a plan of the Battle of the Nile, a map of the voyage, The Tower of Marabou, Egypt and The Pharos at Alexandria, all shown opposite. Cooper Willyams (1762-1816) entered the church in 1784 as a curate in Suffolk. His father had been commander in the Royal Navy and in 1793 Willyams followed him to sea sailing to the West Indies as chaplain in Boyne. In 1797, he was made domestic chaplain to Admiral Earl St Vincent, commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean. The following year he joined Swiftsure,
under Captain Hallowell, in which he witnessed the Battle of the Nile on 1 August 1798. He took no part in the action but as an accomplished artist and topographer, who had already published views of Suffolk and the West Indies, Willyams recorded the battle, and its aftermath, in a series of evocative images. With an eye to publication, he continued to capture images of the Eastern Mediterranean, and British dealings with their Turkish allies, until returning to London in September 1800. Published two years later, ‘A voyage up the Mediterranean in his Majesty’s ship the Swiftsure,’ was an instant popular success, providing rich imagery to accounts of the battle. Nelson owned a copy which was sold by Emma, Lady Hamilton in 1813. A plan of the battle ‘made on the following morning’ by Captain Miller in Theseus was included in the book which can be compared to the manuscript plan made in Zealous in similar circumstances (see page 18). Many of Willyams’s views of Aboukir Bay and Alexandria so closely match the decoration on the service of porcelain prepared by Sir William and Lady Hamilton as a birthday gift for Nelson in September 1798 that it appears likely they were hastily copied by artists in Naples ahead of the presentation.
