Field-Marshal Sir Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey KG, GCB (1768-1854)

The Field Marshal the Marquess of Anglesey, painted in 1816 and connected to the great Waterloo Chamber commission that George IV organized at Windsor Castle, depicts the cavalry commander who had led the British horse at Waterloo before losing his right leg to one of the last cannon shots of the battle. Anglesey's cavalry charge against Napoleon's Imperial Guard was one of the most celebrated military actions of the entire Napoleonic Wars, and his subsequent stoicism about his wound — the legendary exchange with Wellington on the field has him noting the loss of his leg and Wellington observing its departure with the matter-of-fact remark that has since passed into historical anecdote — became an emblem of the British military character. Lawrence's full-length portrait at 236.2 by 147.3 centimeters belongs to the series of Waterloo Chamber paintings that collectively documented the Allied military and political leadership in one of the most ambitious portrait commissions in British history. The painting captures Anglesey at thirty-eight, the fresh wound still a recent memory, with the composed authority that Lawrence consistently found in his military sitters and that suited his Romantic painterly manner — dramatic without theatricality, heroic without pomposity.

The military uniform is rendered with meticulous attention to the cavalry officer's richly decorated tunic, while the face conveys both martial confidence and the gravity of a man who had endured extraordinary physical sacrifice. Lawrence's brushwork is at its most vigorous in the treatment of the gilt braiding and epaulettes.