Woodbury

The action of 13 January 1797 was a minor naval battle fought between a French ship of the line and two British frigates off the coast of Brittany during the French Revolutionary Wars. During the action the frigates outmaneuvered the much larger French vessel and drove it onto shore in heavy seas, resulting in the deaths of between 400 and 1,000 of the 1,300 persons aboard. One of the British frigates was also lost in the engagement with six sailors drowned after running onto a sandbank while failing to escape a lee shore. The French 74-gun ship Droits de l'Homme had been part of the Expédition d'Irlande, an unsuccessful attempt by a French expeditionary force to invade Ireland. During the operation, the French fleet was beset by poor coordination and violent weather, eventually being compelled to return to France without landing a single soldier. Two British frigates, the 44-gun HMS Indefatigable and the 36-gun HMS Amazon had been ordered to patrol the seas off Ushant in an attempt to intercept the returning French force and sighted the Droits de l'Homme on the afternoon of 13 January. The engagement lasted for more than 15 hours, in an increasing gale and the constant presence of the rocky Breton coast. The seas were so rough that the French ship was unable to open the lower gunports during the action and as a result could only fire the upper deck guns, significantly reducing the advantage that a ship of the line would normally have over the smaller frigates. The damage the more maneuverable British vessels inflicted on the French ship was so severe that as the winds increased, the French crew lost control and the Droits de l'Homme was swept onto a sandbar and destroyed. Thomas Buttersworth...

Superb late 18th-early 19th-century portrait study of a young boy holding his favorite book. the piece is very well painted and in great condition for its age. It came from a private...

Wonderful Early 19th-century English landscape. The painting is from the first part of the 19th-century and has all the quality of the 18th-century traditional landscape painters. T...

Wonderful and outstanding example by one of Englands known and much-loved 18th and 19th-century painters. Morland was an English painter who became one of the most popular artists of...

John Nost Sartorius was the son and pupil of the sporting painter Francis Sartorius, (1734-1804) whose style is very similar to his own. A prolific painter of every aspect of the cou...

Daniel Clowes was active/lived in United Kingdom. Daniel Clowes is known for horse and landscape, figure painting.His work is in a similar manner to that of George Stubbs and he may...

Daniel Clowes was active/lived in United Kingdom. Daniel Clowes is known for horse and landscape, figure painting.His work is in a similar manner to that of George Stubbs and he may...

Ibbetson was probably educated in a local Moravian community at Fulneck and then by Quakers in Leeds. Between 1772 and 1777 he was apprenticed to John Fletcher, a ship painter in Hull where he also enjoyed some success as a theatrical scene painter for the Hull Theatre. In 1777 he moved to London, where for the next decade he worked as a picture restorer. From this employment, he was able to acquire a thorough acquaintance with the works and methods of Dutch artists. In 1785 he exhibited at the Royal Academy A View of Northfleet and continued to exhibit during succeeding years. Through the connoisseur Captain William Baillie, Ibbetson was appointed draughtsman to Colonel Charles Cathcart on the first British embassy to Peking (Beijing) in 1787. Cathcart, however, died at Java during the voyage. Ibbetson returned to England, having made many drawings of the fauna and the scenery encountered during the voyage that included visits to Madeira, the Cape of Good Hope, and Java. He was also able to obtain nautical experience which he afterward turned to account in his pictures. In 1789, Ibbetson went to visit Viscount Mountstuart at Cardiff Castle. This was the start of a long association with Wales, where he painted numerous scenes of folklife and picturesque scenery as well as detailed watercolors of iron furnaces, coal staithes, and copper mines, which provide an important record of early industrial developments in that part of the country. A visit to the Isle of Wight in 1790 was the inspiration for a series of paintings of shipwrecks...

Daniel Clowes was active/lived in United Kingdom. Daniel Clowes is known for horse and landscape, figure painting.His work is in a similar manner to that of George Stubbs and he may...

A wonderful Oval oil on canvas portrait of a little girl. Very much in the style of Jean-Baptiste Greuze.