Breaking Up of the Agamemnon, No. II
Medium
Etching on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 26 × 48 cm (10 1/4 × 18 15/16 in.); Sheet: 40.3 × 57.8 cm (15 7/8 × 22 13/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
28435
Art Historical Context
Francis Seymour Haden's *Breaking Up of the Agamemnon, No. II* (1880) captures a poignant moment in maritime history through the delicate art of etching. This large-scale print (image 26 × 48 cm) depicts the dismantling of HMS Agamemnon, the storied British warship that served as Lord Nelson's flagship during the Napoleonic Wars. Haden, a British surgeon-turned-etcher and key figure in the 19th-century etching revival, produced this as part of a series documenting the ship's scrapping at a Portsmouth dockyard in the 1870s—a vivid record of industrial transformation and the end of an era. Etch...
About the Artist
Francis Seymour Haden · 1818–1910
Sir Francis Seymour Haden (1818–1910) was a pioneering English etcher and distinguished surgeon whose passion for printmaking elevated him to the forefront of Britain's Etching Revival. Born on 16 September 1818 in Chelsea, London, to physician Charles Thomas Haden, he received a classical education at Derby School and Christ's Hospital before pursuing medicine at University College London and the...