Funeral Procession of the late Lord Viscount Nelson from the Admiralty to St Paul's London

This watercolour is one of four works in the collection which were drawn by Auguste Pugin to record the funeral of Nelson. This image shows the funeral cortege arriving at St Paul’s Cathedral on 9 January 1806 having rested overnight in the Admiralty. The funeral carriage in the foreground had been designed by Rudolf Ackermann in the shape of a boat with a canopy inscribed ‘Trafalgar’ and the procession itself comprised numerous soldiers and dignitaries. It was so long that the head of the procession arrived at St Paul’s shown here before the tail had left Whitehall.

Pugin was an Anglo-French artist and architectural draughtsman who worked primarily for publishers of illustrated books. His training and interest in depicting buildings is demonstrated in this watercolour by the careful delineation of St Paul’s Cathedral which was engraved and circulated from 1 April 1806.