Surrender by the English at Santa Cruz de Tenerife

This work shows the signing of the capitulation treaty by the English in 1797, following their attempt to capture the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife during the Anglo-Spanish war.

This war, which pitted the Spanish and their French allies against the English, from 1796 until the signing of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, saw several battles between the 2 sides. One such battle took place in 1797, when the English commander Horatio Nelson hatched a plan to seize the Canary Islands for the British and capture the "Princesa"—one of the frigates that was on its way back from the Americas, laden with treasure and goods. He attacked the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife with various ships, frigates and gunboats, as well as around 4,000 troops. Lieutenant General Gutiérrez prepared a defense with the forces at his disposal: mainly militiamen from the island, and the island's forts and castles. Despite the huge difference in their military resources, the Spanish defeated the English, who were forced to sign a capitulation treaty on July 25 of the same year.

This painting is the work of the Tenerifan artist Nicolás Alfaro y Brieva. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts of the Canary Islands and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando, where he studied landscape painting with the artists Carlos de Haes and Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, who were proponents of landscape painting in 19th-century Spain. His work was part of the Spanish Romanticism movement and art "au plein air," or painting outdoors, and he is best known for his seascapes and landscapes.