The apotheosis of Nelson in the National Gallery of Naval Art

The National Gallery of Naval Art was situated within the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital from 1824 until 1936. This collection of British naval paintings, sculptures and curiosities was the first ‘national’ collection to be acquired and exhibited for the general public, preceding the foundation of the National Gallery by a matter of months. Installed in the wake of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Naval Gallery, as it was more commonly known, was founded to ‘commemorate the splendid Services of the Royal Navy of England’. This paper explores how naval heroism was constructed and commemorated within the gallery space, particularly through the presentation of combat and the recognition of resulting injury, amputation or fatality. Nelson was represented at numerous points across the gallery space, providing us with the most thorough example of this heroic construct. Situated upon the same spot in the Painted Hall where the body had been laid in state in 1806, this site of naval veneration bordered on a quasi-religious mausoleum. This paper examines the role that the Naval Gallery played in the apotheosis of this national hero, establishing an initial commemorative prototype upon which a wider national Nelsonic mythology can be seen to have developed.