File:Joseph Miller, a Greenwich Pensioner, circa 1832 RMG BHC2862.tiff

A head-and-shoulders portrait study of an elderly man in a woollen or cloth cap, wearing a jacket, waistcoat and stock. This is one of a series of nine head-and-shoulders portraits of Pensioners at the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich, all wearing typical pensioners' dress. These former naval seamen were painted by Burnet as studies for his picture of 'Greenwich Pensioners Commemorating the Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar', possibly commissioned by the Duke of Wellington in 1835 as a pendant to David Wilkie's 'Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo dispatch'. It was exhibited in 1837 and shows Greenwich Pensioners commemorating Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar in Greenwich Park, with the Hospital in the background. This work is still displayed at Apsley House, London. The NMM holds a print of the completed picture (PAI1598). The NMM also has a watercolour copy by S. P. Denning from which Burnet himself produced a large engraving, where the sitters for some of these studies are identified.

John Burnet was a Scottish engraver and painter who went to London in 1806, where he executed large plates of Wilkie's works. He painted a number of large landscapes, including 'Greenwich Pensioners', and wrote several books on painting. See also BHC2510, BHC2579, BHC2741, BHC2856, BHC3092, BHC3098, BHC3099, BHC3148.