A half-length portrait of a man, facing front, with his arms folded, wearing a Naval uniform, with a medal and military ribbons.

The Order of Merit was founded on the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, to recognise ‘exceptionally meritorious services in Our Crown Services or towards the advancement of the Arts, Learning, Literature, and Science or such other exceptional service as We are fit to recognise’. The Order is restricted to twenty-four members, of whom Admiral Lord Fisher (1841-1920) was one of the first. John Fisher joined the navy at the age of thirteen, rising through the ranks to become a rear admiral in 1890 and First Sea Lord from 1904 to his retirement in 1910, during which time he was instrumental in the development of a modern navy based on fast, oil-powered battle cruisers. Fisher was brought back as First Sea Lord by Winston Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty) at the start of World War I, but disagreements with Churchill over the conduct of the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) campaign led to Fisher’s resignation in 1915.

In 1906 King Edward VII instructed his newly appointed Librarian, John Fortescue, to commission portraits of four senior members of the Royal Household from the Austrian artist Emil Fuchs (1866-1929), who had painted the then Prince of Wales in 1899 and had designed the King’s Coronation medal and new stamps and coins. The King wished also to extend the commission to portray members of the Order of Merit, but his choice of Fuchs met with strong resistance from Fortescue, who regarded the artist as ‘a self-advertising imposter’. Fortescue succeeded in having Fuchs’s commission cancelled; he wished instead to commission drawings from Alphonse Legros (1837-1911), who was however thought to be ‘in so independent a position that he accepts no work that does not please his fancy’, and so Fortescue championed Legros’s former pupil William Strang. Samples of Strang’s work were shown to the King in January 1907, and it was agreed that he should receive the Order of Merit commission. Strang executed portraits of fourteen members of the Order, with others drawn by Feodore Gleichen, Charles Holroyd, Charles Ritchie and Elinor Hallé. The Order of Merit commissions fell into abeyance with the outbreak of war in 1914, until their revival in 1987.

Signed by the sitter, lower centre J.A.Fisher, and by the artist, lower right W. STRANG / 1908. Strang also executed an almost identical painted portrait of Fisher (Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, inv. no. 1595). 

Text adapted from Holbein to Hockney: Drawings from the Royal Collection