Head-and-shoulders marble bust on a round socle, the sitter facing forward, his hair worn medium length and parted almost centrally. He is shown in vice-admiral's full-dress uniform (two shoulder stars), wearing the ribands of the Bath and St Ferdinand, the stars of the Crescent (reversed), the Bath and St Ferdinand, and two Naval gold medals worn from the neck (for St Vincent above and the Nile below, the latter inscribed 'NILE / AUGUST / 1 / MDCCXCVIII'. Below the stars another medal with the figures of 'Victory' and 'Britannia' is suspended from a ribbon bow, resembling the obverse of the Naval gold medal but probably intended to be the Nile medal issued privately by Nelson's agent, Alexander Davison. The empty right sleeve is pinned across at the bottom, the anchors of the cuff buttons set diagonally. Nelson's admiration for Flaxman as a sculptor is recorded in correspondence of 1801 with Sir Edward Berry, when he contributed £200 toward Flaxman's monument of Captain Ralph Miller in St Paul's Cathedral. E.H. Baily is also recorded as reporting Nelson telling Flaxman that, if ever a statue were made of him, he hope the latter would carve it (Walker, 'The Nelson Portraits' (1998), p.175). The prime version of this bust appears to have been one done for Alexander Davison in 1805-06. Despite being reportedly based on another poorly identified 'great bust', possibly Anne Damer's, that by Thaller and Ranson is far more likely to be the source. Davison could certainly have had access to the original (SCU0088), then still with Lady Hamilton, though other copies were already available (Walker, pp. 175-76). Flaxman's version for Davison is probably that today owned by the Ministry of Defence (Walker, no. 215). The present version was purchased with other material from the 3rd Viscount Bridport in 1978, having previously been on loan to the Museum since 1947. It had come to him from his aunt the Hon. Mary Hood (1873-1934), daughter of the 2nd Viscount Bridport (second creation), who in 1898 married Sir Frederick Cook of Doughty House, London, himself a notable collector. It presumably descended to her from her great-grandmother, Charlotte Nelson, the admiral's niece and heir to his Sicilian Dukedom of Bronte. A letter to the Museum of 15 December 1947 from the 3rd Viscount Bridport recounts that 'There is a story in my family that Nelson's niece, Charlotte (1787-1874) who married in 1810 Samuel 2nd Baron Bridport, in the presence of her grandson the late Alexander Nelson Hood KCVO (1854-1937), pointed to this bust and said, "That is the only true likeness that has ever been made of my dear uncle." This story was told me by Sir Alexander Hood, [who was] my great-uncle...' (see Walker, p.176). The prime difference between SCU0090 and the MoD version is that its shows the Order of the Crescent, more correctly, at the bottom of the decorations: in the latter it is at the top. The cuff buttons on the MoD version also differ, being shown with the anchors horizontal. The Museum has another rather different version in marble (SCU0104) and there are Copeland Parian-ware versions in the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, and the Monmouth Nelson Museum. All relate compositionally to Flaxman's much larger national monument to Nelson in St Paul's Cathedral. This was commissioned in 1807 but only erected in 1818 and features a full statue of Nelson, though in that case with the head half turned to sitter's left rather than facing forward as shown in the busts. [PvdM 9/06]