Bulletin No.68 - A Feather in the Duke’s Hat

Welcome to the Spring Bulletin 2025 

Our leading item today is a unique and historic survival with wonderful period provenance in the form of feathers from the cocked hat the Duke of Wellington wore at Waterloo. Treasured as relics of the epoch defining battle, they were acquired by the painter George Hayter in 1818, when carrying out a commission for his patron the Duke of Bedford. Hayter was then regarded as a rising star among portrait painters and was thus given early access to Wellington following his return from the Allied conference at Aix-la-Chapelle by which the post Napoleoninc occupation of France was terminated by the victorious Allies.  From Hayter’s possession they have remained intact with his hand written testimony. 

The Duke of Wellington, 1844 - Edward Hodges Baily, RA

The Wellingtonian theme continues with a fine 1844 equestrian group featuring the duke modelled by Edward Hodges Baily RA (of Nelson’s column fame) for the prestigious Bond Street firm of Hunt & Roskell. The Battle of Waterloo is the subject of another star offering this time in the form of Orlando Norie’s large scale watercolour ‘42nd Highlanders at the Battle of St Jean, Waterloo’. Interestingly this work in a difficult and unforgiving medium still retains an original hand written label to the reverse tying it to Rudolph Ackermann’s Eclipse Sporting Gallery at 191 Regent Street. For royal enthusiasts we are pleased to include a rare pendant commemorating the marriage of the Princess Royal to the future Emperor Frederick III of Germany, dating to their marriage at St James’s Palace in 1858. Lastly we can’t let the 80th anniversary of VE Day go by unremarked, and so here to celebrate is the largest of Royal Doulton’s iconic Churchillian creation - Bulldog Jack.

The Black Watch at Waterloo (1815) - by Orlando Norie, 1860