File:Cleopatra's needle being brought to England, 1877 RMG BHC0641.tiff
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Captions
Summary[edit]
Cleopatra's needle being brought to England, 1877 | ||||||||||||
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Author |
George Knight |
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Title | ||||||||||||
Object type |
painting object_type QS:P31,Q3305213 |
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Genre | marine art | |||||||||||
Description |
English: Cleopatra's needle being brought to England, 1877 Built in about 1500 BC during the reign of Pharaoh Thothmes III, the 3,500 year-old Cleopatra's Needle was presented to Britain at the beginning of the 19th century. Its hazardous transport to London was only made possible in October 1877 by a private sponsor, Dr Erasmus Wilson, and by John Dixon. He designed a cylindrical vessel, the 'Cleopatra', which was constructed around the Needle. Cleopatra's Needle was brought to London from Alexandria, the royal city of Cleopatra. Britain wanted something large and significant to commemorate the British victory over Napoleon, sixty-three years earlier. So the British public subscribed £15,000 to bring the Needle over from Alexandria. It arrived in England after an eventful journey by sea in January 1878. A specially designed cigar-shaped container ship, also called the ‘Cleopatra’, was devised to convey it. Built by the Dixon brothers it was an iron cylinder, 93 feet long, 15 feet wide, and divided into ten watertight compartments. However on 14 October 1877 in treacherous waters off the west coast of France in the Bay of Biscay the ‘Cleopatra’ was in danger of sinking. The steam-ship towing her, the ‘Olga’, sent six volunteers in a boat to take off the ‘Cleopatra's crew, but the boat was swamped and the volunteers drowned. Eventually the ‘Olga’ drew alongside and rescued ‘Cleopatra's’ five crewmen and their skipper, and cut the towrope, leaving the vessel adrift in the Bay of Biscay. Five days later a ship spotted the ‘Cleopatra’ floating undamaged off the northern coast of Spain, and she was towed to the port of Ferrol. There a steam-ship, the ‘Anglia’, arrived to tow the Cleopatra to London by January 1878. In September 1878 the needle was positioned on the Thames Embankment, where it still stands. The painting is a contemporary account of the journey, though it is not an eye witness account. It records the period in the journey when the ‘Cleopatra’ was under tow by the paddle steamer shown in the distance on the left. The figures in the ‘Cleopatra’ struggling with the sail demonstrate the precariousness of the journey and instability of the vessel. |
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Date |
circa 1877 date QS:P571,+1877-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,Q5727902 |
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Medium | oil on canvas | |||||||||||
Dimensions | Frame: 870 mm x 1356 mm x 65 mm;Painting: 755 mm x 1270 mm | |||||||||||
Collection |
institution QS:P195,Q7374509 |
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Current location | ||||||||||||
Accession number |
BHC0641 |
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Notes | Signed.; This object was sighted as being on display during the Collections Inventory Project (2001-2005). | |||||||||||
References | ||||||||||||
Source/Photographer | http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/12133 | |||||||||||
Permission (Reusing this file) |
The original artefact or artwork has been assessed as public domain by age, and faithful reproductions of the two dimensional work are also public domain. No permission is required for reuse for any purpose. The text of this image record has been derived from the Royal Museums Greenwich catalogue and image metadata. Individual data and facts such as date, author and title are not copyrightable, but reuse of longer descriptive text from the catalogue may not be considered fair use. Reuse of the text must be attributed to the "National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London" and a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0 license may apply if not rewritten. Refer to Royal Museums Greenwich copyright. |
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Identifier InfoField | Acquisition Number: OP1960-11 id number: BHC0641 |
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Collection InfoField | Oil paintings |
Licensing[edit]
This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain".
This photographic reproduction is therefore also considered to be in the public domain in the United States. In other jurisdictions, re-use of this content may be restricted; see Reuse of PD-Art photographs for details. |
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 09:12, 1 October 2017 | 4,830 × 2,893 (39.98 MB) | Fæ (talk | contribs) | Royal Museums Greenwich Oil paintings (1877), http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/12133 #1960 |
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