Self-portrait of Lieutenant Gabriel Bray sketching in watercolours (Bray album) RMG PT2025

Self-portrait of Lieutenant Gabriel Bray sketching in watercolours [Bray album]
No. 50 of 74 (PAJ1976 - PAJ2049)
A drawing, dated and signed on the backing sheet 'April 75 AVprGB' (to the life by Gabriedl Bray), of Bray drawing an image of a cutter at sea from memory. This and PAJ2024 are the two self-portraits in the Bray album, this one being a good illustration of the equipment of a watercolourist of the period. The scene of both is perhaps more likely the ship's wardroom rather than Bray's sleeping cabin, which would have been very small, and both would probably have been done using the mirror shown in PAJ2024. Bray is also sitting on the same chair, or one of the same pattern, to that shown in his portrait of another of the ship's lieutenants (PAJ2017).
This is one of 73 drawings by Bray (plus one signed 'NF 1782') preserved in a 19th-century album. They have now been separately remounted. Bray (1750-1823), was second lieutenant of the 44-gun ‘Pallas’ under Captain the Hon. William Cornwallis (1744-1819) – later a well-known admiral - on two voyages (1774-77) to report on British interests in West Africa, including the slave trade. The dated drawings refer only to the first of these, from December 1774 to September 1775, though a few may be from the second. Others comprise country views, some of Deal, Kent (where Bray may have come from), and others of social-history interest.

Lieutenant Gabriel Bray sketching in watercolours