Overall: 63cm (25in) x 89cm (35in)
Provenance: Parker Gallery, Albermarle Street, London
Watercolour on paper. Contained in Victorian titled mount ‘42nd Highlanders at the Battle of St Jean, Waterloo’. Applied verso with period manuscript inscription hand written label verso inked ‘No 1. 42nd Highlanders at the Battle St Jean, Waterloo, painted by Orlando Norie, 191 Regent Street, London’. Signed ‘Orlando Norie’ lower right. Image: 43cm x 71cm. Framed and glazed.
After a severe mauling and loss the commanding officer at Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815, the 42nd Highlanders took to the field at Waterloo on 18 June as part of Picton’s 5th Division that was consequently under strength. The 42nd occupied a position behind Hougoumont on the right of the ridge to the north. It came under French artillery fire throughout the day and of the 329 men who went into action that day, 50 became casualties. Orlando Norie depicts the moment towards 4pm when the 5th Cuirassiers (14th Cavalry Division), clashed with the Black Watch in square formation during the mass cavalry attack by 9000 horsemen initiated by Marshal Ney. Sergeant Cotton, a Waterloo veteran who fought with the British 7th Hussars as a private stated, ‘it is doubtful whether any [French cavalrymen] perished on a British bayonet, or that any of our infantry in square fell by the French cavalry’s sabres’. That said, Colonel Grobert of the 5th Cuirassiers was mortally wounded.
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Orlando Norie (1832-1901) belonged to a branch of the well-known family of Scottish painters, active in artistic life since the time of James Norie the Elder in the early eighteenth century. He is thought to have been taught by his father, Robert, a prosperous manufacturer and amateur artist who left Scotland for the continent in 1821, staying first in France and then for a long period in Belgium. The family returned to France in 1851 in much reduced circumstances, settling in Dunkirk, where Orlando was to remain. Although Norie was known in France as a painter of everyday scenes and genre works, he is best remembered as a military illustrator working primarily in watercolour. His output was published widely and appeared on postcards, in magazines and regimental histories. His talent was first recognised in the autumn of 1854 when the London printmaking firm of Rudolf Ackermann published his picture of the Battle of the Alma. This was followed by prints of the Crimean battles of Inkermann and Balaclava, and later episodes of the Indian Mutiny. Ackermann’s Eclipse Sporting and Military Gallery served as the main outlet for many of Norrie’s original works. He was viewed as the natural successor to Henry Martens (fl.1825-1865) and received royal patronage of Queen Victoria.