Henry Nelson O'Neil's The Parting Cheer is a crowded scene depicting a ship crammed with emigrants leaving from a London quayside, focusing on the reactions of the grieving friends and families left behind on the shore.
The Art Fund has helped with the acquisition of various images and objects associated with Nelson – a purse, a tea caddy, a toothpick case. Two of the most splendid are a portrait of the Vice-Admiral by Lemuel Francis Abbott, based on a sketch done while Nelson was at Greenwich, and Yinka Shonibare's Fourth Plinth sculpture Nelson's Ship in a Bottle, which has a permanent home outside the museum's Sammy Ofer Wing thanks to our fundraising campaign.
