December 10-13, 2024 Firearms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/10/2024
Pastel, charcoal and watercolor on laid paper, 28 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches, within frame. At dawn on December 14, 1798, the French 24-gun corvette Bayonnaise encountered a 32-gun Royal Navy frigate cruising off Oléron. HMS Ambuscade assumed the French ship was her expected consort, while the latter correctly identified the stranger as a superior British warship and fled, Ambuscade then giving chase. Around noon, she had closed to cannon range and the action commenced. Within an hour, the British had gained the upper hand and Bayonnaise attempted to escape, but the frigate gave chase again and caught up around 3 p.m. As Ambuscade was overtaking the corvette, sailing on a parallel course, Bayonnaise slacked her sails and turned hard to her port (left), ramming the Briton. The bowsprit of Bayonnaise brought down Ambuscade’s mizzen, wounding many on her poop and entangling the two ships. Both ships fired final broadsides, Bayonnaise losing many men and her captain, his arm. However, the French cleared the deck of the frigate by well-aimed grapeshot and musketry from her fighting tops and, using the bowsprit as a bridge, boarded the larger ship. After a bloody, 30-minute melee, purser William Beaumont Murray, last British officer still standing, surrendered Ambuscade. The hard-fought battle left the corvette a leaking and rudderless wreck, while Ambuscade, despite damage and the loss of her mizzenmast, was otherwise intact and towed Bayonnaise into Rochefort the following day. Casualties were high on both sides, with 15 killed and 39 wounded aboard Ambuscade and 25 killed and 30 wounded on Bayonnaise, her captain and lieutenant among the latter.
The defeat of a British warship by an inferior French ship was a rare occurrence during the French Revolutionary War and this battle was celebrated with numerous painting commissions, the most famous being the large and magnificent work by Louis-Phillipe Crepin (1772-1851) titled "Combat de la Bayonnaise contre l’Ambuscade"(now prominently displayed in a main gallery of the Musée national de la Marine in Paris). This pastel on paper is one of the artist’s studies for that work, considered by many to be Crepin’s finest piece. It is a conceptual drawing for the dramatic, central element in the painting: the boarding of the larger British frigate from the bow of the smaller French vessel. In the completed oil painting, the scene is very much as rendered here, although the artist has removed the British ensign that dominates the upper portion of the drawing. Crepin studied under Regnault, Hubert Robert and Joseph Vernet and his paintings are very much in the romantic style of these French masters. He painted in oils, but also worked in watercolor and gouache and was also an accomplished aquatint engraver. He is considered one of the greatest of the French marine painters and the first such artist to receive the honorary title and appointment, in 1830, as Peintre de la Marine to the French government.