François-Auguste Biard. "On the Deck of a Ship during a Battle"

The French artist François-Auguste Biard shows a sea battle not from a distance but from the deck, where everyone is busy with his own task. The picture was painted in oil on canvas in 1855 and measures 130 by 195 centimetres.

In the centre a ship's boy runs straight towards the viewer with a cartridge in his hands. Behind him an officer and sailors are trying to raise the British naval ensign, torn down during the fight. On the bridge to the right are the captain with a telescope and a bugler, and nearby gunners are loading a ship's gun. Above the deck rises the black smoking funnel of a steamship, masts and rigging are visible, and in the distance a sailing ship passes under full sail.

Biard (1799–1882) was born in Lyon and travelled widely: in 1827 he visited Malta, Cyprus and Egypt, in 1839 he took part in an expedition to Spitsbergen and Lapland, and he spent about two years in Brazil at the court of Emperor Pedro II. The British navy also appears in his other works, for example in the painting "Seasickness at the Ball on Board an English Corvette" (1857).