Transcribed from an old label attached to the reverse:

'Escape of the French Commodore – Intrepide tows Tonnant out of action, 14th October 1747.
 
The Second Battle of Finisterre. A superior British Fleet under Sir Edward Hawke including twelve ships of the line and two fifties, defeats a French Squadron of eight ships of the line, six of which were captured.
 
The French Commodore, Monsieur de L’Etenduere [sic] is depicted by Dominic Serres making a brilliant escape by being towed from the action passing Hawke’s flagship close by to starboard.

and SUNSET AFTER HAWKE'S VICTORY AT THE SECOND BATTLE OF FINISTERRE'

Our research suggests that this painting was completed in the first half of Dominic Serres’s career, prior to 1777. A copy by Pierre-Julien Gilbert (1783-1860), commissioned by Louis Philippe I, King of the French, was completed in 1835 and hangs in the Château de Versailles.

The Second Battle of Cape Finisterre was fought between the French and British on the 14 October 1747, part of the War of the Austrian Succession which took place from 1740 to 1748. The commander of the British fleet, Rear-Admiral Edward Hawke, had been instructed to intercept a French convoy of merchant ships setting sail for the West Indies that was protected by ships of the line commanded by the Marquis de L’Estenduère, the objective being to starve the French colonies of supplies. Although the French ships of the line were larger and stronger than the British, the latter had the advantage of agility and number as well as superior training and discipline on board.

Towards the end of the battle six of the French ships had been captured and they can be seen lying dismasted in the background of the painting. The flagship Tonnant was surrounded. Coming to its rescue, the little-damaged Intrépide turned into the fray and enabled Tonnant  to disengage before they fled together from the enemy. Clowes describes the scene in The Royal Navy (1897), ‘Towards night the Intrépide and Tonnant, finding that the day was lost, set all sail with a view to escaping. […] The two French ships, though very badly damaged, succeeded in getting into Brest’. Burrows quotes a dispatch after the battle in The Life of Edward Lord Hawke (1883), ‘[…] the Tonnant had escaped in the night by the assistance of the Intrépide which, by having the wind of our ships, had received no damage that I could perceive’. Sources do not make clear mention of Intrépide towing Tonnant, as depicted in this painting, however this is likely the result of the narrative that became popular among the public. The drama of the scene is heightened by the symbolism of the line of rescue which connects one ship to the other. Both the French and English claimed the battle as a victory and, fittingly, the painting itself seems to have had owners on both sides of the Channel.

Serres’s painting of the scene first appears in auction records at Christie’s in 1777, sold by an anonymous deceased estate. It then appears a further five times in the next eight years at the same auction house, including passing through the hands of notable figures such as Sir William Chambers RA (1723-1796), architect of Somerset House, and Sir William Curtis Bart. (1752-1829), an often-caricatured businessman, banker and politician. In 1785 it was sold from the property of the late Richard Lumley-Saunderson, 4th Earl of Scarborough (1725-1782) and, after this date, it does not surface at auction again.

Perhaps not incidentally, 1785 was the year in which Serres made his only visit to Paris. He was bringing examples of his work to show the Marquis de Castries who, as Russett explains, was seeking an artist to ‘paint pictures of France’s glorious deeds performed by the navy in this last war to decorate the walls of the naval training establishments at Brest, Rochefort and Toulon’. Fellow maritime painter Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) acted as an intermediary in this matter. However, the commission was ultimately given to the amateur artist Auguste-Louis de Rossel de Cercy (1736-1804).

Ten ensuing naval battle scenes by Rossel de Cercy are now held in the Musée de la Marine. Approximately fifty years later, a new series of paintings of naval battles was commissioned, this time by Louis Philippe for a new museum at Versailles. As explained by the Palace of Versailles, ‘Louis-Philippe drew on the old royal and princely as well as private and institutional collections, completing it with copies and retrospective works commissioned from contemporary artists’ as he strove to both unify the nation and repurpose the Palace. The maritime artist Pierre-Julien Gilbert (1783-1860) was commissioned and copied several of the aforementioned paintings by Rossel de Cercy. Tantalisingly, he also copied Serres’s painting of the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre and his copy now hangs in the collection of Versailles.

The museum record for Gilbert’s painting states that it is a ‘Copy after an original painted in London in 1786 for the Comte de Vaudreuil’. This information is supported by a fragment of an early label, written in French, attached to the reverse of Serres’s painting on which the name ‘Comte de Vaudreuil’ can be discerned. The auction records state the buyer of the painting in 1785 to be ‘Seguin’, however the sale seems to have been cancelled in some way. This date of course coincides with the time of Serres’s first and only visit to Paris when he would have encountered many notable patrons, potentially including the Comte who had several paintings by Vernet in his collection. As we know a painting of the scene existed before this time, it is quite possible that it was not painted in 1786 but rather sold in this year to the Comte, or alternatively he commissioned a copy of it from Serres.

The Comte was a French nobleman at the court of King Louis XVI. He had sold the majority of his collection of Old Masters in 1784 and in the subsequent years he acquired works by almost every contemporary French artist of note. In 1787, however, he again sold the majority of his collection due to financial difficulty and in 1789 he fled the French Revolution to the Austrian Netherlands. However, the ‘Finisterre’ painting does not appear in the 1787 auction catalogue, nor in the records of the Musée de la Marine by whom it could have been acquired. Regrettably, it therefore remains a mystery where Gilbert saw and copied the painting and how and when it returned to England.