Admiral Skeffington Lutwidge (1735-1814).

JEAN Philip. (c.1795)

£19750.00 

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COMMANDER ON THE PHIPPS ARCTIC EXPEDITION

Watercolour and body colour portrait in an oval gilt frame. Measuring 69 by 56mm. Backed with finely latticed hair, monogrammed in tiny seed pearls surmounting a fouled anchor in gold foil. Both sides glazed, straight pin fastening across the verso, suspension loop at top. 

This fine portrait is one of three known miniatures of esteemed Royal Navy officer Admiral Charles Skeffington Lutwidge (1737-1814). Cumbrian born, Lutwidge saw active service during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. However, he is mostly remembered for his association with a young Horatio Nelson.



In 1773 during his third spell as First Lord of the Admiralty, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, after being petitioned by the Royal Society, proposed to King William IV a voyage with the stated aim of ascertaining the most northerly passable point.

 

Overall command of the expedition was given to Constantine Phipps, who had previously accompanied prominent Royal Society member Sir Joseph Banks on a voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador. Phipps was to command the officer's ship, HMS Racehorse, while Lutwidge was given command of HMS Carcass. The young and supremely eager Nelson had approached his uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, with a view to building upon his voyage to the West Indies the previous year. Suckling was to be engaged on defensive duty in the North Sea, an occupation deemed too pedestrian for the keen young seaman and so Suckling turned to his friend Lutwidge who was able to appoint Nelson as Coxswain aboard HMS Carcass.

 

That this should have been deemed a suitable voyage for a boy of fifteen is something of a mystery. It is well known that a particularly hardy and experienced crew had been sought for the physically draining and mentally fatiguing voyage to the Arctic.

 

However Nelson was thought to have acquitted himself well and Lutwidge held him in high regard. Indeed, Lutwidge would later come to lay one of the foundational stones of Nelson mythology, recalling - with obvious approval - how Nelson and a fellow seaman had stolen onto the ice in the dead of night in order to hunt a bear. Nelson is said to have fearlessly approached the enormous and evidently angry animal, holding his rifle aloft with the aim of delivering a fatal blow with its butt. Returning empty-handed Lutwidge reprimanded Nelson for this frivolous and irresponsible sport. On being asked to explain himself Nelson replied "Sir, I wished to kill the bear, that I might carry its skin to my father."

 

Lutwidge went on to take commands in North America and the Mediterranean, most notably at the fall of Fort Ticonderoga and in the Saint Lawrence River.

 

The following miniature is very similar to one in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, and though neither are signed, looks to be by the same hand. The Museum has also attributed theirs to lauded Jersey miniaturist Philip Jean (1755-1802). In the accompanying paperwork is included a memoranda from a Sotheby's valuation in the 1980s, in which Jean's authorship of this miniature was questioned, and their expert attributed it to the perhaps grander Jeremiah Meyer. Another version of this miniature is known, the distinction between the three being Lutwidge's uniform, which suggests perhaps a new portrait was commissioned to mark each change of rank within the Royal Navy. 

 

Provenance: This portrait is accompanied by a small 18mo family bible (lacking title page) with two Charles Lutwidge signatures dated 1732 and 1737, and a 3pp. late nineteenth-century manuscript note on Lutwidge family history. It was consigned to auction by a member of the family. 

Stock Code: 205279

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