Overall: 58cm (23in) x 48cm (19in)
Pencil and watercolour on paper. Three quarter length portrait of Lieutenant Walter Brinkley in undress uniform of the 11th Hussars, comprising pill box hat, frock coat worn over ‘cherrypicker’ trousers, in the hue adopted from the livery of Prince Albert.
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Lieutenant Walter Stephens Brinkley (1826-1884), 11th (Prince Albert's Own) was the youngest son of the late Rev. John Brinkley, Rector of Glanworth, and Anna, second daughter and co-heir of Walter Stephens, of Hybla, co. Kildare; and grandson of the Royal Astronomer of Ireland John Mortimer Brinkley, later Bishop of Cloyne. Walter was commissioned Cornet by purchase, on 24 September 1847 in the fashionable 11th Light Dragoons, then under the command of hot-headed James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan. Would be officers of the 11th Light Dragoons needed deep pockets to pay for the richly embellished uniforms Cardigan introduced. Brinkley was sufficiently compliant to Cardigan’s whims to be promoted lieutenant, by purchase on 10 November 1848. In 1851 his elder brother died while serving in India, leaving him heir to the Brinkley estates. He retired in 1853 and settled in Ireland at Knockmaroon House, Castle Knock, Co. Dublin. He was a Justice of the Peace and staunch defender of Protestantism in the face of the increasingly 'papist' tendencies of the Church of England’s Oxford Movement and his many children’s and grandchildren’s total disregard for such matters.