Victorian military paintings
Ray Westlake looks at a selection of artwork by Richard Caton Woodville
Ray Westlake looks at a selection of prints and paintings by Richard Caton Woodville, one of the premier artists of the British Victorian Army.
Who, when researching the battles of the Victorian age, has not come across the artwork of Richard Caton Woodville? Detailed paintings, full of smoke and fire that draw the viewer excitingly into the action. And who would not be moved by the face of a young drummer boy as he watches an officer of the Coldstream fall to the ground, desperately grasping the Regimental Colour in his hands, as the Guards storm the great redoubt on the Alma River during the Crimean War? And again, in All That Was Left Of Them, the artist gives us a scene showing just a handful of lancers huddled together fighting off the enemy as their comrades and horses lay dead and wounded all around. Great and exciting works of art recalling British history.
First the father, also Richard Caton Woodville and a successful artist. Born 1825 in Baltimore, America, he would find his way to Europe aged 20, dying of a morphine overdose in London on 13 August 1855. Just under five months later, his wife Antoinette Marie would give birth to a son, Richard Caton Woodville Jr, the subject of this article.
Richard the son, like his father, studied painting in Düsseldorf, one of his tutors being the noted Prussian military artist, Wilhelm Camphausen. Professionally, Woodville would enjoy regular employment with the Illustrated London News, for whom he reported first-hand accounts of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and in 1882, the campaign in Egypt. Exhibitions at the Royal Academy followed, and if you are a medal collector, you will be aware of Woodville’s commission to design the reverse of the British South Africa Company Medal showing a charging lion wounded in the chest by an assegai.
Richard Caton Woodville enjoyed great success and notoriety and his achievements on canvas would without doubt earn him the reputation of being one of Britain’s leading military artists. But, as was the case with his father, his story would end in sadness. After having suffered financial problems (he was declared bankrupt in 1905) he would be found dead at his studio in St John’s Wood, NW London on 17 August 1927, an inquest subsequently bringing in a verdict of suicide.
ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY OFFICERS IN DUGOUT, 1915
Painted c. 1915, a wash drawing shows four officers of the Royal Field Artillery relaxing in a dugout somewhere on the Western Front, their guns silent for now, concealed in the woods behind. Binoculars in hand and service
revolver at his side, one keeps a sharp eye out for any activity that might interfere with the calm of the moment. Seated on straw to defeat the mud, a captain keeps in touch with home via a newspaper, several days old possibly, but welcome nonetheless. His friend, with his back to us and wearing his
Sam Browne belt with two shoulder straps, enjoys a cigarette as he scans the back pages for anything of interest. Just a hastily-dug hole cut out from the gun emplacement and covered with twigs and corrugated iron, this, with its shelf full of domestic essentials, for the moment, is home.
KIRKE’S LAMBS
The regiment that in 1881 would become the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment) had been raised 220 years earlier for the purpose of garrison duty in Tangier. A fortress on the northern coast of Africa, the city had been ceded to England as part of the marriage settlement between Portugal’s Catherina of Braganza and King Charles II. Woodville includes in his caption for this watercolour Kirk’s Lambs, the nickname acquired by the regiment in association with Colonel Piercy Kirke who had taken command of the regiment in 1682. The device of a lamb, its origins uncertain, had been featured on the regiment’s Colours and appointments from its formation.
DRUMMER, 9TH REGIMENT
Woodville’s caption accompanying this watercolour of a drummer from the 9th (East Norfolk) Regiment of Foot included the nickname ‘The Holy Boys’. The 9th wore scarlet jackets with light yellow facings, and following the tradition of the time whereby drummers wore the colours in reverse, here we see the musician in a yellow coat. A scarlet lining is just visible on the turnbacks, the collar and underside of the shoulder wings. A feature of drummers’ uniforms, regimental lace (white with a black line) is much in evidence. We can date the figure around the time of Waterloo, the shako worn being of the pattern introduced in 1812 and used until 1816. Of the nickname? The story goes that, seeing the regiment’s ancient badge of Britannia during the Peninsular War, a Spanish soldier, thinking it was the Virgin Mary, knelt and crossed himself.