Saluting the Admiral (Pears Poster) (Greenwich Pensioner saluting bust of Nelson). This is One of three Plates presented with Pears' Annual 1905 RMG PZ7615

Saluting the Admiral (Pears Poster) (Greenwich Pensioner saluting bust of Nelson). This is One of three Plates presented with Pears' Annual 1905
A print after the painting, signed and dated 1904, by Albert Holden. It was one of three plates, printed in 13 colours, and presented with ‘Pears’ Annual’ in December 1905 together with, ‘The Happy Mother’ by Madame Henriette Ronner, and ‘Sweethearts’ by Frederick Morgan. It shows a scene in the Upper Hall of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, with a uniformed naval pensioner saluting a bust of Nelson. This is positioned on a column on which a laurel wreath and union flag are also draped. In the background is a detail of Thornhill’s wall decoration on the north side of the arch into the Upper Hall, a representation of ‘public security’ ensured by the Navy. The Pensioner is shown with a wooden leg so he has also suffered in the course of duty defending the nation.
The artist was a British painter of history and genre scenes. He was active in London and exhibited at the Royal Academy after 1881. With the ‘Pears Christmas Annual 1905’, Admiral Lord Charles Beresford wrote a pamphlet with H. W. Wilson entitled, ‘Nelson and his Times’. In it he states; ‘Nelson was the embodiment of the idea of Sea Power which has moulded our national life and kept us in the position of a first rate power wielding a mighty influence in the interests of peace, civilization and progress.’ The print bears the inscription, ‘From the Original Painting by Albert W. Holden in the Possession of Messrs Pears. This is one of Three Plates Presented with “Pears Annual” 1904.’
The bust which the Pensioner is saluting is almost certainly a plaster version of one by E. H. Baily (circa 1840) of which the NMM has another copy (SCU0087) as well as a number of scagliola support columns from the Greenwich Hospital Collection of the sort Holden shows: an early 20th-century photograph of such a bust on one of these columns, brought to the Museum's notice in 2008, suggests there was one among the sculpture in the former Naval Gallery in the Painted Hall,which closed in 1936, though it is now unlocated. Holden would have known this but his composition is essentially imaginary, nostalgically harking back to the days of the Greenwich Pensioners, who were disbanded as a uniformed residential body at Greenwich in 1865.

'Saluting the Admiral'