Overall: 40cm (in) x 49cm (in)
Oil on panel. Duff impaling Manners for James Duff, 4th Earl Fife, and his wife Mary Caroline Manners second daughter of John Manners, grandson of the 2nd Duke of Rutland; the arms bearing an augmentation of honour in the form of an inescutcheon charged with the Royal Arms of Spain. Framed.
James Duff, 4th Earl Fife (1776-1857) married Mary Caroline Manners, who died young in 1805 without children. Thereupon Duff sought distraction and took up the cause of Spanish resistance to Napoleon. He served with distinction at the Battle of Talavera (1809), where he was severely wounded and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. He became Viscount Macduff the same year on his father's accession to the Irish earldom of Fife, but continued to serve in Spain, where his brother Sir Alexander Duff commanded the 88th Connaught Rangers. Diego Duff was further present during the defence of Cadiz against Marshal Victor, and was again severely wounded in the attack on Fort Matagorda in 1810. In 1811 he succeeded his father as 4th Earl Fife and returned to Britain, after being made a knight of the order of St. Ferdinand. In 1817 he founded Dufftown to provide housing and employment for soldiers returning from the Napoleonic Wars. In 1827 he was created Baron Fife in the Peerage of the United Kingdom and a Knight of the Thistle. In 1830 was made a Lord of the Bedchamber to King William IV.
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Arms - Beneath an Earl’s coronet, the arms of Duff - Quarterly, 1st and 4th, or, a lion rampant, gules., 2nd and 3rd, vert, a fess, dancette, erm., between a hart’s head, cabossed, in chief, and two escallops, in base, or. Impaling Manners: Or two bars, az., a chief quarterly of the last and gu, in the 1st and 4th, two fleur-de-lis, and in the 2nd and 3rd, a Lion passant guardant, all or. Crests - 1st a horse, in full gallop, arg., covered with a mantling gu., bestrewed with escutcheons, each charged with a lion, rampant, of the second, on his back a knight in complete armour, with his sword drawn, ppr., on his sinister arm a shield charged as the escutcheons; on the helmet a wreath of colours, thereon a demi-lion, rampant, gu.; 2nd, a demi-lion, rampant, gu., holding in the dexter paw a broadsword, ppr., hilted and pommelled, or. Supporters - Two savages, wreathed about their heads and waist with laurel, holding in their exterior hands, the branches of trees on their shoulders. Motto: Virtue et opera (By virtue and deeds). Suspended beneath - The Order of the Thistle.