Battlefield intel, circa 1854
From the Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg
Russian fleet at the port of Batumi in today’s Georgia was made from a work of French marine painter Jean-Baptiste Henri Durand-Brager (1814-1879) during the Crimean War. It is one of the 24 beautiful views published under the title “A Voyage in the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles”. The painter had been commissioned by the western allies in an expedition to make sketches and plans of the positions of the Russian Empire. From today’s perspective, it is a strange combination of art and military strategy