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"Trafalgar, Nelson's plan…"

Trafalgar Dawn (http://www.frickers.co.uk/marine-art/trafalgar_dawn.html)  has become a famous painting including being reproduced in several authoritative books and is available as a signed numbered Heritage edition from this web site.

For some years now friends have been asking me to paint and print the opposite view, from the French flagship, to make a pair, neat idea but the research proved very illusive.

Do have a look at the beginning of this historic painting and be one of the first people to to see pretty much what the French saw from their flag ship Bucentaure on that fateful Monday 21st October 1805.Trafalgar_Dawn__French_perspective__painting_in_progress_IMG_8530_14.09.10.JPG

After much extensive reading, visits to various sources in England and France and help from several kind people with the research I have at last been able to get as close to the original moment as I think is possible.

The journey researching this painting uncovered some new information and made several mysteries and myths from Trafalgar clearer.

Examples being:

  1. If the British fleet was described as “not in regular order“, what did that mean?
  2. How much did Villeneuve anticipate Nelson’s plan, his ‘new’ Nelson Touch?

As I have to leave for Monaco tomorrow I am not going to write much here but will reveal more as this  marine painting progresses.

To the above questions, I discovered the British fleet were spread over some 4 x 4 nautical miles and roughly in 4 columns.

What did Admiral Villeneuve expect Nelson’s plan of attack to be?

The answer is he expected exactly what he got.

What did he do or not do about it?

That’s another question for which I now have detailed and some times surprising  answers but will leave for another day.

I will furnish the story and proofs soon from French and Spanish sources, there will be surprises!

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This new marine painting which is the same dimensions as the original Trafalgar Dawn 12″ x 48″ (305 x 1219mm), it seems is destined to be very well received in France.

The Trafalgar Dawn prints sizes are smaller than the original marine painting (now in a private collection) given approximately on page

http://www.frickers.co.uk/prints.html

together with a user friendly, easy and secure ordering system based on PayPal.

Already people in France are saying “you must show “Trafalgar, Nelson’s plan…” in the Musee Maritime, Paris”; very kind of them but easier to say than do, please write to the museum with a request now that would help!

Why would the Musee Maritime, Paris be interested in “Trafalgar, Nelson’s plan…“?

Napoleon’s attitude was Trafalgar did not happen, did not matter.

In France people still use the phrase “the catastrophe of Trafalgar“.

The painting draws attention to Trafalgar, the French perspective, a rather different story to the one told by the British.

For anyone familiar with the British accounts of Trafalgar this will be a tale of surprises, great courage miss management and plain old fashioned bad luck.

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What’s happening to this painting?

Trafalgar, Nelson’s plan… is of course in a very early stage of development.

At present it does not have a buyer and is provisionally intended unless snatched up before, for the exhibitions next year at the European Parliament and City of Plymouth.

I only wish I could spend more time on this painting.

Now the research is complete I am very keen to finish the painting.

However I do intend it finished by the end of November.

You are seeing the British fleet marked out in as close to the correct positions and distances as 10 years of research and careful assessment of the evidence can make so.

You are one of the first people in over 200 years to see this sight.

Partly so as not to accidentally paint out a British ship I have while working from a series of  preparatory drawings, marked a letter for each ship in the “sea”.

Once the sky is sorted out I’ll ‘submerge’ the letters.

The uniforms of the French have all been researched and another long trial!

It is quite well know that the French were into uniforms years before the British.

However it seems that although Naploean had naval uniforms re designed well before Trafalgar it seems not everyone wore the regulation dress.

However, here we are on a flagship, the 80 gun ship of the line Bucentaure so might reasonable expect most of the uniforms to be correct.

It’s not so easy as surviving journals indicate on the 21st some wore their full dress uniforms while others wore their undress uniforms (working cloths).

We do know what Villeneuve looked like and what he wore.

You can see him standing at the centre of a group of officers, about to accept a telescope.

What these men were thinking, how they had gotten into this situation and how they felt about this is all part of the coming story.