La Mort de Nelson

On the 21st of October 1805, off Cape Trafalgar, a French sharpshooter high in the rigging shot Horatio Nelson as he paced the deck of HMS Victory in full admiral's uniform. He died some hours later below deck, in the dark and crush of the ship's surgery. Benjamin West chose not to paint that. He staged the scene in open daylight on the quarterdeck, Nelson sinking amid a crowd of officers and sailors, more like an altarpiece than a report. West had long argued that recent events deserved the grandeur once kept for ancient heroes. When this canvas went on show in London, thousands filed past it. The uniforms and the ship are contemporary, painted for a public that had read the dispatches only months before.