Image:Captain William Locker.jpg

A half-length portrait of Captain William Locker, apparently as Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital, a role he held from 1793 when ill health forced him to give up service afloat and in which he continued to his death in 1800.

This portrait shows Locker in late-middle to old age, consistent with the suggested date. He is seated to the left, facing forward towards the viewer, wearing a naval-style blue coat with gold buttons. In his left hand he holds a 'quizzing-stick', a barley twist cane with an eyeglass, which he used to scrutinize the pensioners at Greenwich Hospital. Behind the sitter's arm, in the background to the left, the artist has painted the mast of a ship as a reminder of Locker's naval career. This apparently bears a commodore's broad pennant, the most senior rank that Locker attained, since he did not live long enough to reach substantive flag rank by seniority.

Locker is best known as Nelson's first captain after he became a lieutenant in 1777. Nelson was also staying with him at Greenwich in 1797 when - through Locker's agency- Abbott came down to make the oil study on which all his Nelson portraits were based. By report there were over forty, of which the best known (BHC2889) of 1799-1800 became the first 'public' high-quality engraved image of Nelson other than the inferior print by Robert Shipster of 1797 from the earlier Rigaud portrait (BHC2901) - itself borrowed from Locker for the purpose, owing to public interest - after the Battle of St Vincent. It was also Locker's original suggestion, in 1795, that the Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital be converted into a 'national gallery of naval art', an idea not then pursued but subsequently effected in 1823-24 by his son Edward Hawke Locker, secretary and a commissioner of the Hospital at that time.

Locker was a considerable patron of artists, his portrait being painted twice by Gilbert Stuart (BHC2846, BHC2976), in watercolour as 'The Old Commodore' by David Wilkie, and by Dominic Serres (d. 1793), from whom he also commissioned other views. The last is the only known oil portrait by Serres and is now in the Yale Center for British Art. This portrait was presumably painted about 1795 and was stipple-engraved by James Heath (PAF3488). The Museum purchased it, via Christie's, in 1961 from a private owner.

The National Maritime Museum

circa 1795-1800

Lemuel Francis Abbott