Lieutenant General Sir William Edmund Franklyn, KCB, Colonel of the Regiment (1906–1914)

The portrait of Lieutenant General Sir William Edmund Franklyn, KCB, Colonel of the Regiment (1906–1914), painted by Herbert James Draper in 1912 and held at the Green Howards Museum in Richmond, Yorkshire, commemorates a senior British Army officer at the height of his command. Sir William Franklyn (1856–1914) had a distinguished military career that included service in India and South Africa; he was appointed Colonel of the Green Howards — the Princess of Wales's Own Yorkshire Regiment — in 1906. The Green Howards Museum, which documents the history of one of England's oldest and most celebrated county regiments, holds this portrait as part of its collection of regimental officers and their commemoration. Such formal military portraits served multiple institutional functions: as records of command succession, as focal points for regimental pride and historical memory, and as assertions of the prestige associated with distinguished service. Draper's commission demonstrates the range of his professional portrait practice beyond his mythological exhibition subjects, and his handling of the formal military portrait context.

The formal military portrait requires the precise rendering of uniform, medal ribbons, and insignia that denote rank and honours. Draper balances the documentary requirements of the commission with the expressive portraiture skills that distinguished his figure painting generally.