Lady Elizabeth Butler, (British, 1846-1933)

Dawn of Waterloo

Dawn of Waterloo
The 'Reveille' in the bivouac of the Scots Greys on the morning of the battle
signed with initials and dated '18 EB 95' (lower left)
oil on canvas
127 x 196cm

To be sold on behalf of a charitable institution.

Provenance:
The artist.
By descent from Lady Butler to her daughter, Eileen, Viscountess Gormanston.
To Eileen's daughter, Ismay, wife of Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart.
To their son, Major M.D.D. Crichton-Stuart, Palace of Falkland, Fife.
Thence by descent.
Property of the Falkland Stewardship Trust.

Literature:
Paul Isherwood & Jenny Spencer-Smith, Lady Butler, Battle Artist, exhibition catalogue, 1987, cat. no. 60, illustrated p. 108.

Exhibited:
Aldershot, Club House, 1895.
London, Royal Academy, 1895, no. 853.
London, National Army Museum, Lady Butler, Battle Artist, May–September 1987, travelling to Durham Light Infantry Museum and Arts Centre and Leeds City Art Gallery, October 1987-February 1988.

Elizabeth Southerden Thompson, later Lady Butler, is arguably the greatest British military painter of the nineteenth-century. She was born in Switzerland and from the age of sixteen trained at the South Kensington Schools in London and in Florence at the Accademia di Belle Arti. As is evident in her sketchbooks, Butler had expressed an interest in military subjects from early in her training and, at the age of nineteen, even visited the site of the Battle of Waterloo. However, it was upon viewing the work of Jean Louis Meissonier whilst visiting Paris in 1870 that she was truly inspired by military subjects, and these became her sole focus.

Butler's significant private commission of 1874, The Roll Call, signifies her break as a professional artist, as the work achieved critical praise and popular success when exhibited at the Royal Academy in the same year. Impressed, Queen Victoria would go on to purchase the painting and it is still held in the Royal Collection. The Roll Call, along with most other paintings produced by her in the ensuing years, would focus on the Crimean Wars.

Marriage in 1877 to Colonel William Butler would bring a great deal of fresh subjects for the artist to capture, as she was able to travel widely through the British Empire with her new husband. Significant oils relating to colonial warfare were produced during this time, perhaps most notably The Remnants of an Army: Jellalabad, January 13th, 1842 and The Defence of Rorke's Drift, January 22nd, 1879. However, her husband, having recently been honoured with a knighthood and promoted to Brigadier General, was injured at Wadi Halfa in 1886. This prompted a return to permanent residence in the UK.

Butler began work on the present picture in the summer of 1893 at her home in Delgany, County Wicklow. Her aim was to create as great a sense of realism as possible. As such, in her words, '...not a thing [was] painted in the studio', and instead she relied on the warm summer evenings to prepare twilight studies. Given the rural location of the family home, Butler explains where her models came from: 'I pressed many people into my service as models, and I think I got their fine Irish faces very true to nature. I even caught an Irish Dragoon home on leave in the village, whose splendid profile I saw at once would be very telling.' It is understood that this model is the central figure in the composition's foreground.

In November 1893, William Butler took command of 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot where the painting was continued – the old court martial hut having been fitted with skylights was repurposed as a studio. Butler made good use of the Brigade's soldiers and her sketches produced during this time show some of the focal figures slumbering and awakening. It is here that the painting was completed and in March 1895 it went on display at the Club House, Aldershot, before being exhibited at the Royal Academy in the same year.

The painting shows young troopers of the 2nd Royal North British Dragoons - Scots Greys - awakening on the morning of 18th June 1815. Later that day they were to take part in the heroic charge of the Union Brigade. A charge which, at first successful, ended in terrible losses to the British. The work can therefore be seen as a commemorative piece which alludes to the ultimate sacrifice a soldier can make. Perhaps Butler's most famous painting, Scotland For Ever!, depicting the charge itself, now hangs in Leeds City Art Gallery (see fig.1).

The present work represents an artist matured in their craft. It captures the stoic virtue with which Elizabeth Butler's soldiers are so often imbued, but there is a sensitivity to this work unlike others by her. In Butler's own words, it was 'never painted for the glory of war, but to portray its pathos and heroism'.