Henry Nelson O'Neil

He also had popular successes with romantic scenes portraying the deaths of Mozart and Raphael, depicted as though mentally transported to heaven by their own religious art.

The other members of The Clique were Augustus Egg, Alfred Elmore, Richard Dadd, William Powell Frith, John Phillip, Edward Matthew Ward.

These included ‘ By the Rivers of Babylon,’ ‘Catherine of Aragon,’ and ‘Ahasuerus and the Scribes.’ Further fame came with ‘Eastward, Ho!’ of 1857, and ‘Home Again.’ Most of the Clique opposed the Pre-Raphaelites, but O'Neil was the most virulent in his condemnation of the movement, attacking them in both paintings and writings.

The archaeologist uncovers evidence of the decline of British culture in the nineteenth century, allowing O'Neil to vent his own distinctly reactionary political views, predicting dire consequences of the Reform Act 1867.

During the voyage he edited and illustrated five issues of the shipboard newsletter The Atlantic Telegraph, and on his return to England he published an account of the expedition in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.