Rev Dr Alexander Scott - Public domain portrait painting

The Reverend Doctor Alexander Scott, 1768-1840
A half-length portrait in which the seated sitter faces left, looking out to the viewer, wearing a black jacket and waistcoat and a white shirt and neckcloth. Thrown over the arm of the settee behind him is his academic hood as a Doctor of Divinity of Cambridge University, a degree conferred on him by royal mandate in 1806, which was his only reward for his considerable public service. Painted in the year of his death, this portrait may be posthumous.
Scott, son of a naval lieutenant, was a naval chaplain from 1793 and saw a great deal of service in the Mediterranean and the West Indies early in the French Revolutionary War. He was an accomplished linguist and Nelson, who first encountered him in the Mediterranean in the 1790s, asked for his services at the time of the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, when Scott was chaplain to his superior there, Sir Hyde Parker. About 1802, when back in the West Indies, where he briefly also held a living, Scott was granted another also concurrent with his chaplaincy duties, at Southminster in Essex.
However, when it seemed likely that the Peace of Amiens would be short and Nelson anticipated being appointed to a wartime foreign station, he asked Scott to become his chaplain and secretary for foreign correspondence. He therefore joined Nelson in the 'Victory' during his tenure of Mediterranean command and remained constantly with him from 1803 to Trafalgar in 1805, when he attended the dying admiral. He then accompanied Nelson's body back to England and continued to watch over it until the funeral and burial in St Paul's Cathedral on 9 January 1806. Scott remained vicar of Southminster to his death, initially on a very limited income, but his circumstances improved in 1816 when he was granted the additional living of Catterick in Yorkshire. He thereafter mostly lived at Catterick, where he died.
In the left background of this portrait there is a painting on the wall of a ship in a storm, struck by lightning. This refers to an incident off Jamaica in 1802 when the Scott was chaplain of the station flagship 'Leviathan' under Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth, who sent him on a brief mission to San Domingo in the frigate 'Topaze'. While returning the ship was struck and Scott was seriously injured. The American artist Thomas Birch (1779-1851) painted an account of the incident, though whether this is picture represented is unknown, especially since Bendixen has signed and dated the portrait (1840) on its frame. The Museum also has a plaster bust of Scott (SCU0049) probably also made about the time of his death, and he most famously appears at a much younger age in A. W. Devis's celebrated painting of the death of Nelson (BHC2894).
Bendixen (1786-1864) was a German artist born in Kiel. He worked in London for a period and exhibited a few portraits and various other subjects, including religious ones, at the Royal Academy between 1834 and 1853. His second name occasionally appears as 'Detlev'.

The Reverend Doctor Alexander Scott, 1768-1840