Shipping off the Downs, c.1793
Dominic Serres (c.1722-1793) was the dominant British marine painter of the second half of the eighteenth century and a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1768, the only marine specialist among its original members. Born in Auch, Gascony, and intended by his family for the priesthood, he instead ran away to Spain as a young man, going to sea and eventually becoming master of a trading vessel to Havana. Captured by a British frigate and brought to England as a prisoner of war around 1758, he settled permanently in London following his release, where he is believed to have studied under the marine painter Charles Brooking before establishing an independent practice. Serres's career coincided with the Seven Years' War and, later, the American War of Independence, both of which supplied a steady demand for pictures recording British naval engagements, and his patrons included prominent naval commanders such as Augustus Keppel and, later, John Jervis. His series of eleven paintings recording the capture of Havana in 1762, now in the National Maritime Museum, established his reputation, and he went on to paint major actions of the American war, including the Great Siege of Gibraltar and events from the Battle of the Saints. In 1780 he was appointed Marine Painter to King George III, a position his son John Thomas Serres would later inherit, and in 1792 he became Librarian of the Royal Academy, a post he held only briefly before his death the following year. Between 1761 and 1793 he exhibited prolifically, showing 105 works at the Royal Academy alone. John Mitchell Fine Paintings' collection of works by Dominic Serres reflects the gallery's particular expertise in British marine painting, extending to related artists including Willem van de Velde the Younger and Robert Cleveley. In 2025 the gallery played a role in the rediscovery of a major Serres painting, The Foudroyant Bringing in the Pégase to Portsmouth Harbour, which depicts the aftermath of a real naval action of April 1782, in which Captain John Jervis's HMS Foudroyant captured the French 74-gun Pégase off Ushant. Serres's own son, Dominique Michael Serres, was serving aboard the Foudroyant at the time, giving the painter a personal connection to the episode he depicted. The painting, probably commissioned by Jervis himself, later 1st Earl of St Vincent, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1793 before disappearing from public view for well over a century, remaining within the same family and, by James Mitchell's account, spending time hidden in a loft. It resurfaced at Bonhams in April 2025 and was subsequently restored and offered by John Mitchell Fine Paintings, a rediscovery featured in Country Life in July 2026. The episode illustrates both the continuing appetite for fresh discoveries within Serres's oeuvre and the gallery's role in bringing such paintings back into scholarly and public view.