Overall height: 30cm (12in)
Patinated Bronze. Standing figure of a member of the Honourable Artillery Company in the uniform worm at the time of the War with Revolutionary France. Signed to the integral base ‘L.S. Merrifield Sc.’
Uniform details seen in the present figure accord with many of those described for the HAC in an article written by the Marquess of Cambridge in 1962 for the Journal of the Society of Army Historical Research, Vol.40, No.161, pp.3-22, on the 77 plates prepared by Thomas Rowlandson and published by Ackermann on 12 August 1799.
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Viz: - ‘Plate XX. Honourable Artillery Company of London. Captain-General: The Prince of Wales. The plate depicts a private. Uniform: Crested helmet with silver fittings, a leopard-skin turban and a white feather tipped with red. On the label, ARMA PACIS FULCRA; on the right side the Prince of Wales's feathers. Scarlet jacket; blue collar edged round the bottom with white piping and with a silver button and loop at each end; blue lapels edged with white piping, and with silver buttons and loops in pairs; blue cuffs edged with white piping, three silver buttons and loops are visible. Blue wing edged with silver with a small fringe; white linings. On oval silver breastplate the Prince of Wales's feathers and the name and motto of the company. Buttons have the same device. The pouch is plain. The white pantaloons fit like spats over the boots.’
Leonard Stanford Merrifield (1880–1943) was born in Gloucestershire. He attended Cheltenham School of Art, the City & Guilds of London Art School and the Royal Academy Schools, where he won the Landseer scholarship and the Armitage prize. He was an assistant in Goscombe John’s studio, but by 1891 was working independently as a stone carver in Fulham. Merrifield showed regularly at the RA summer exhibitions from 1906. In 1913, he was one of ten sculptors selected by the Royal Society of British Sculptors to provide statues for Cardiff City Hall. He was elected a Fellow of the society in 1926.
In 1928 Merrifield was commissioned by the Court of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) to produce a sculpture of a mounted artilleryman to commemorate the war service of B Battery (2nd City of London Horse Artillery), Honourable Artillery Company, in the Middle East, notably in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, from 1915 to 1918. Merrifield also executed war memorials in Cornwall for Newlyn (1920) and the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry in Bodmin (1922); in Ireland, at Comber and Holywood and at Lurgan, County Armagh (1928). Merrifield lived and worked in Chelsea during the latter part of his life. During the Second World War he was a civil defence warden, and was present at his local ARP post on the day he died. His memorial service at St Luke’s Church, Chelsea, was well attended. At the time of his death, he was working on a statue of H.H. Asquith for the House of Commons.