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Horatio Nelson

6 of 86 portraits of Horatio Nelson

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Horatio Nelson

by Friedrich Heinrich Füger
oil on canvas, 1800
26 3/4 in. x 19 3/4 in. (679 mm x 502 mm)
Purchased, 1859
Primary Collection
NPG 73

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This is the only known image of Nelson in civilian dress. Both he and his mistress Emma Hamilton sat to Füger shortly after their arrival in Vienna from Naples in 1800, after the victorious Battle of the Nile (1798). By that time, Nelson's fame was quite phenomenal and the couple were followed by thousands wherever they went. Each city they visited held grand celebrations. Prague was illuminated for his forty-second birthday and a special black cape with colourful trimmings invented and named after him.

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Current affairs

Widespread food riots after poor harvests of 1798-9. Theorist, Thomas Malthus, controversially argues that poverty and food shortages are an inevitable consequence of population growth, challenging assumptions that populousness was a sign of national prosperity and power. His thesis contributed forcefully to the debate over the existing Poor Law.

Art and science

William Wordsworth publishes his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads; a retrospective explanation of his experimental poems written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It becomes one of the best-known manifestos of Romantic literature.

International

Lord Castlereagh, Chief Secretary for Ireland, is the main architect of the Act of Union under which Ireland is merged with Great Britain and the Irish parliament is abolished.
British troops support successful uprising by Maltese against the French.
Napoleon is victorious against Austrians at Marengo and reconquers Italy.

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