- 120
Constantinos Volanakis
Description
- Constantinos Volanakis
- The Battle of Trafalgar
- signed lower left
- oil on canvas
- 104 by 174cm., 41 by 68½in.
Provenance
Purchased by the father of the present owner circa 1914
Literature
Miltiadis Volanakis, My Father, Athens 1963, p. 8
Manolis Vlachos, Greek Sea Paintings, Athens, 1993, p. 210, cited
Catalogue Note
Painted by the artist during his Munich period, this work shows Volanakis at the height of his career. According to Miltiadis Volanakis, the artist's son, the work previously hung in the reception room of the Ministry of Shipping in London (Miltiadis Volanakis, My Father, Athens 1963, p. 8)
Volanakis is an artist of great importance in nineteenth-century marine genre, most notably for his position as a key member of the Greek 'Munich School' movement of Academic Realism. Volanakis's interest in marine subjects was first exposed during his tenure as an accountant in the sugar firm of his brother-in-law Georgios Afentoulis, when his idle sketches of the harbour and small ships on the firm's ledgers drew the enthusiastic attention of his employer. Volanakis was duly sent, with the financial backing of his family, to the Academy of Arts in Munich, where he studied under Karl von Piloty.
The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was fought between the British Navy and the combined fleets of France and Spain, during the War of the Third Coalition (August - December 1805) of the Napoleonic Wars (1803 - 1815). In this dramatic work, Volanakis depicts the mêlée following the submission of the French vessel Redoubtable by HMS Victory and HMS Temeraire.
Trafalgar was the most decisive British naval victory of the war. Twenty-seven British ships of the line led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard Victory defeated thirty-three French and Spanish ships of the line under French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve off the south-west coast of Spain, just west of Cape Trafalgar. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships, without the loss of a single British vessel.
Nelson was mortally wounded during the battle, becoming one of Britain's greatest war heroes. The commander of the joint French and Spanish forces, Admiral Villeneuve, was captured along with his ship Bucentaure. Spanish Admiral Federico Gravina escaped with the remnant of the fleet and succumbed months later to wounds sustained during the battle.