This is a tidy little mural job that came about while I was painting the Comet Classics mural back in April. One of those word-of-mouth jobs that sometimes actually materialise into something. Happily in this case, rather better than it was first described. Word-of-mouth and recommendation has a satisfying caché to it. I really must remember to stop painting outdoors in bloody November though...
The house is known as Lady Hamilton's Cottage, and is reputedly a former residence of the scandalous mistress of Lord Nelson. Her story makes for some wonderful reading if you're unfamiliar with it, and sheds a fascinating domestic light on our nations most famous national hero himself! They were as famous as the Beckhams' in their day - with knobs on! Seriously, I don't know why this hasn't been turned into a TV costume drama, it would be brilliant! A classically British rags to riches to rags story of the aristocracy, art, love, passion, politics, war, revolution and scandal set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic War and the French Revolution.
I don't know what the actual provenance of the cottage is, (I suspect it was "named in her honour", but that would be to suggest she had some...) However, it's a rather lovely original 18th century, three storey 'cottage' in the centre of Old Portsmouth, with a small courtyard bounded on one side by this 5-arched wall. St Thomas' St was evidently heavily hit during WW2 and the area is quite a warren, but the wall's fairly easily findable if you're keen. It is a private courtyard though, so you'll need to respect that.
The first suggestion was to paint portraits of Nelson and Lady H in separate arches looking out over the Solent, with HMS Victory in the middle distance. Since there are 5 panels, and it's quite an enclosed space, I felt the courtyard needed a view - something to give a sense of space. Luckily the client liked the idea of a more informal panorama that would connect the 5 panels into a continuous landscape, that included a few implicit allusions to the story; a couple that could be Nelson and Lady H, she's pointing to a ship out on the water that could be Victory, at the other end are ships gathering that could be readying to go off and fight... After all, why let facts get in the way of a cracking yarn, right?
The form of the landscape and the composition is drawn from a couple of JMW Turners' coastal watercolours. There are other stories going on in the details though. There is a small family group walking along the lane, below the church. The boy is turned around looking back up the lane saying something to his mother, while further along beneath the trees at the top of the hill, heading in the other direction a cart driver is looking back toward the family. What gives?The low wall in front of the arches is planned to encompass a raised bed with planting, so the painting includes foliage and flora in the foreground as a lead-in.
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