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The Naumacia to Commemorate a Peace Puff: See Gentlemen, There's a River For You – a New Fancy You Know and Very Useful In My Case. For as There Must Be a Grand Gala I Suppose Lake Serpentine and the Whole English Navy to Complement Britannia with a Fete In Honor of the Peace – Vide Critic

John Nixon (before 1759-1818)

Price
£8,500
Signed
Inscribed with title and 'GR IV' and 'O woe is me I have seen what I have seen seeing what I see - Shakespere'
Medium
Ink with monochrome watercolour with pencil
Dimensions
11 ¾ x 16 ¾ inches
Exhibited
'Bliss Was It in That Dawn To Be Alive, 1750-1850', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, October 2008, no 83;
'The Long Nineteenth Century: Treasures and Pleasures', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, March-April 2014, no 28

Published on 23 July 1814

On the evening of 1 August 1814, grand festivities took place in London’s Hyde Park, Green Park and St James’s Park, to celebrate both the defeat of Napoleon and the centenary of the House of Hanover as reigning dynasty. Central to these celebrations was a naumachia – that is, a re-enactment of a naval battle – on the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Barges brought from the Royal Navy’s dockyard at Woolwich were used to represent the Battle of the Nile of 1798, in which the British fleet under Horatio Nelson had defeated Napoleon’s forces. In the present caricature, published it would seem over a week before the event took place, Napoleon is shown being blasted into the sky on a rocket. The actual event was recorded and disseminated through a series of engravings issued by Edward Orme in the souvenir publication, A Historical Memento. However, the press was less enthusiastic in its response.

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