Lot 69: Elizabeth, Lady Butler (British, 1846-1933)

Soldiers watering horses
signed with initials and dated 1872 l.l.
watercolour
55 x 87 cm. (21 3/4 x 34 1/4 in.)

P. Usherwood & Jenny Spencer-Smith, , National Army Museum, 1987, ill. p.25.

Elizabeth Thompson, subsequently Lady Butler, was one of the leading battle painters of the Victorian age, achieving fame and distinction during a period when the British Army was an integral part of British culture. Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, one of the greatest exponents of the military genre in France commented

'L'Angleterre n'a guère qu'on peintre militaire; c'est une femme.'
ibid, p.15
('England really has only one military painter- a woman').

In 1872, Elizabeth Thompson attended the British Army's autumn manoeuvres near Southampton, where she commented in her diary, she saw
'...the British soldier as I never had the opportunity of seeing him before.'
ibid, p.53.

Elizabeth sent the finished watercolours to the Dudley Gallery in 1873. One of these, was the above work 'Soldiers watering horses' which depicts soldiers of an unidentified mounted rifle volunteer unit watering their horses at a trough under the strict eye of a monocled officer of the 100th (Prince of Wales's Royal Canadian) Regiment. The watercolour was purchased by a Manchester businessman, Charles Galloway, who was so pleased with the work that he commissioned an oil painting from the artist. Elizabeth's choice of subject for Galloway, a Crimean War scene, 'The Roll Call' was to bring the artist immediate success at the Royal Academy in April 1874.