John Thomas Serres

Essay:

John Thomas Serres was a noted painter of sea and shipping, marine battles and landscapes. He was born in London in December 1759 as the elder son and pupil of the Marine Artist to George III, Dominic Serres. John began his career as a landscape painter and exceeded his father in this discipline, strongly influenced by the burgeoning romanticism of artists like Philippe de Loutherburg.

Upon the death of his father in 1793, John Thomas was appointed Marine Painter to George III and the Duke of Clarence. Joseph Farington recorded in his diary on 16th November 1799 that: “J Serres to have the use of a parlour and a room on the 2nd floor in the house in which Turner lodges in Harley Street...Serres to use these rooms from 10 in the forenoon till 3 or 4 in afternoon”.

Aged 20 Serres became Drawing Master at the Maritime School in Ormonde House, Chelsea. Founded in 1777 this establishment had a fully-rigged vessel in the garden for boys to gain expertise in rigging and masts before entering the navy as midshipmen. Drawing was a skill required of all naval cadets then and Serres’ annual salary of £50 was a substantial income, reflecting the importance of the post. The artist also gave private drawing lessons, thereby building an influential network of contacts so that, when he progressed to maritime painting, there was a ready source of commissions.

In the late 1780s and early 90s Serres travelled extensively in Europe making numerous studies of the lands he visited including Ireland, Germany, Paris, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Naples. To raise the funds for these trips he was forced to sell off his fine art collection which included works by Boucher, Kauffman, and John Robert Cozens. From 1800 Serres served as Marine Draughtsman to the Admiralty. His duties were to sail around the British, French and Spanish coastlines and into the Mediterranean to produce drawings in the form of elevations which were subsequently engraved.

In 1791 Serres married his drawing student Olivia Wilmot. A competent painter of romantic landscapes (exhibiting at the RA from 1793–1808 and the BI 1806–11), she was appointed “Landscape Painter to the Prince of Wales” in 1806. The marriage would be the ruin of John Thomas, his wife’s excesses driving him to bankruptcy and a state of mind so broken that he attempted suicide in 1808. She purported to be the illegitimate daughter of Frederick, Duke of Cumberland (youngest brother of George III), calling herself “Princess Olive of Cumberland”, even though this claim was rejected twice through the courts.

By 1820 the artist was back in London, producing a large number of views of the city. Two years earlier he had become one of the founders of the Royal Coburg Theatre (today known as The Old Vic) as its “Director of the internal decorations...and also principal artist and Scene Painter...” In 1825 alone Serres exhibited 67 works at the Royal Academy and 10 at the British Institution, which would suggest that several must have been unfinished in his studio prior to that year. These were the highlight of a flurry of production near the sad end to his life, precipitated by illness. He died in a debtors’ prison in London on 28th December 1825.

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Painted in the penultimate year of Serres’s long life the present picture represents a scene in Naples’ grand harbour crowded with ships. Alan Russett writes: “In the last years of his life Serres produced many important paintings of earlier subjects, among them a majestic view on a wide panoramic scale of the Bay of Naples, dated 1823”. This was: English frigate amongst much activity in the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius erupting beyond, sold by Christie’s in 2006 for £62,400. The two works are closely related and, as Russett suggests, they likely derive from sketches Serres completed in his travels some 23 years earlier.

To the left of the frigate is Castel dell’Ovo on its promontory, and further to the left Castel Nuovo, a thirteenth century stronghold rebuilt by the Aragonese conquerors of Naples in the mid-fifteenth century. The buildings of the Old City march up towards the star-shaped Castel Sant’Elmo. The ships to the left of the composition fly the white and red flag of Malta. A view of Naples with a British war ship would instantly have conjured images in the mind of a patriotic British viewer of the great naval hero Horatio Nelson whose association with the city was well known.

Until our painting appeared on the market, only two Serres works were known that are dated 1824. One is a view of the Thames at Chelsea and the other, The Battle of Trafalgar, was exhibited in the British Institution that same year.

Provenance:

Private Collection, USA