Sir David Wilkie, 'Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch', 1822

Overview

This acknowledged masterpiece represents Wilkie at the height of his powers. Melding seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish influences with the contemporary demand for genre scenes, the artist created an artwork that celebrated the victory of the Battle of Waterloo (1815), while redefining what constituted ‘history painting’. Chelsea Pensioners caused a sensation at the Royal Academy in 1822 and confirmed the artist’s preeminent position in the British Art world. The National Gallery was founded two years later with the acquisition of 38 paintings from the estate of John Julius Angerstein, among which were works by William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, and The Village Holiday by Wilkie. From the beginning, British art and Wilkie, then a contemporary living artist, was central to the Gallery’s collection.

Chelsea Pensioners neatly encapsulates how the emerging National Gallery was a direct outcome of British wartime and post-war pride and patriotism. It was during the Napoleonic War period that London overtook Paris and Amsterdam as the centre of the old master market and critical and popular opinion moved decidedly towards the idea that British art could now hold its own with the long-established European schools, including that of France.