William John Huggins

with indistinct inscription 'Mrs Corban(?)' and with National Maritime Museum inventory label on the stretcher
oil on canvas
52 1⁄2 x 68 5⁄8in. (133.3 x 174.3cm.)
Engraved in aquatint by E. Duncan, published by the artist, London, 1833, as 'The H.C.S. Sir David Scott, Captn D. I. Ward, at the entrance of the Straights of Sunda. Febry 1830'.
Huggins paints the East Indiaman furling its Royals and coming to anchor as a Javanese proa (which looks to have borrowed from Thomas and William Daniell's plate 'Malaye Proas' in the Daniells' Picturesque Voyage to India published in 1810) flying a Dutch flag approaches, with monkeys, a cockatoo and caged local fauna to trade with the sailors on board. The Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra was the passage for virtually all East India trade as it made its way to the Indian Ocean. Its strateg
The Sir David Scott (1342 tons) was one of the largest of the Company's ships, built in the yard of Jabez Bayley at Ipswich for Joseph Hare. She was launched on 21 September 1821 and named for the East India Company director Sir David Scott (1782-1851). She sailed to Bengal and China on her first voyage for the Company in December 1821. The East Indiaman sailed out from the Downs under the command of Captain David James Ward on her fifth voyage to Madras, Bengal and China (as depicted here by Hu
Huggins was in the employ of the East India Company and sailed on voyages to China and India in the early 1800s. Described by the engraver W. J. Linton as ‘a jolly, fat, good-natured fellow, who had been a ship’s cook’ (Memories, 1895, ch.3) he is recorded as a steward and assistant to the purser on the Perseverance which sailed for Bombay and China in 1812, returning in 1814. Soon after, he set up a studio to work on commissions for the Company in Leadenhall Street, near to the East India
Please note this lot is the property of a private individual.
National Maritime Museum, London, acquired c. 1949-51; sale [The Trustees of the National Maritime Museum], Christie’s, South Kensington, 15 May 1997, lot 337.