 Portrait of Francis Basset by Pompeo Batoni, 1778 - one of the paintings captured from the Westmorland (Prado) | |
| History | |
|---|---|
 Great Britain | |
| Name | Westmorland |
| Captured | By French (1779); later recaptured |
| General characteristics | |
| Sail plan | Full-rigged ship |
| Armament | 26 guns |
Westmorland or Westmoreland [1] was a 26-gun British privateer frigate, operating in the Mediterranean Sea against French shipping in retaliation for France's opposition to Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War.
The most notable incident in the life of the Westmorland occurred shortly after she sailed for Britain from Livorno under Captain Michael Wallace late in 1778, carrying a large monetary payment for her inbound cargo of salt cod from Newfoundland (Livorno was a trade hub for this commodity), food goods, [2] and 57 crates of artistic objects collected by Grand Tourists such as the Duke of Gloucester, Sir John Henderson and the Duke of Norfolk. [3]
In January 1779, [4] she was given chase by four French ships, comprising two men-of-war, the Caton (64) and Destin (74), and two smaller vessels. Wallace attempted to outsail them but, outgunned as he was, soon felt he had little option but to allow the French to board his ship. She was then allowed by Spain (then friendly with France though not yet — in formal terms at least — at war with Britain) to continue to Málaga.
The Westmorland was renamed, re-commissioned into the Spanish fleet, but eventually re-taken in the Caribbean by the British. [5]
At Málaga her artistic contents were passed on from the French government to two trading companies with links to Ireland, despite Wallace's protests that the ship was full of "extremely precious goods" (the French had already seized her cash cargo), and the Spanish king was informed by his prime minister, José Moñino, 1st Count of Floridablanca, of the arrival of the art works. Upon Spain's formal declaration of war, king Charles III secretly bought the art from a syndicate of Madrid merchants for 360,000 silver reales (a discount on their original asking price of 600,000 gold doubloons, but still a considerable sum) and had it brought by cart to the capital. Portraits of Francis Basset, 1st Baron de Dunstanville and Lord Lewisham, meanwhile, were acquired by the Spanish Prime Minister. [6]
Although the British consul at Cadiz had initially informed the British Admiralty that the Westmorland and her cargo had been seized as legitimate prizes, demands followed from the British ambassador, firmly backed at cabinet level, for the repatriation of the art and (in a prisoner exchange for French and Spanish prisoners taken by the Royal Navy) the crew of the Westmorland. However, in 1784, the £100,000 for which the art had been insured at Livorno were paid out in London.
To this day, these coveted artistic treasures remain the possession of the Prado Museum, the Real Academia, and other Spanish national collections. There were only a few exceptions: a package of Catholic relics intended for the Duke of Norfolk (which the Spanish returned unopened to the Vatican); Sir Watkin Williams Wynn's Perseus and Andromeda by Mengs, which ended up in the collection of Catherine the Great at the Hermitage Museum and some items which were sent to Mexico, then a Spanish colony. For a long time it was difficult to identify precisely many of the items held in Spain. For example, paintings had been assigned generalised titles such as "A traveller in Italy". [6] Recent research into the original lists in Spain has made more precise identification possible, [7] cataloguing for example items from the collection of Francis Basset, 1st Baron de Dunstanville, including his two portraits.
In 2012 an exhibition of many of the art works captured was held at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, [7] and then traveled to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, United States. [8] [9] In 2024 an exhibition entitled "El Westmorland en Málaga" was held in the former Bishop's Palace of Málaga under the auspices of Unicaja Bank's cultural foundation and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. [5]