Publisher/Manufacturer: Sir Robert Donald, The Daily Chronicle 1911 (year of production) Lithograph in black
550 x 407 mm. Purchase: Jennings Fine Art, Twickenham 2009
One of a group of prints and drawings rescued by Vincent Lines from the artist's Fulham studio after his death. Hartirck named the 5 servicemen in this lithograph. From left to right, they are W. Jones, H. Herbert, J. Ford, all 4th Light Dragoons, J. Mustard, 17th Lancers, and W.H. Spring, 11th Hussars. All but one of these soliders are recorded as having partook in The Charge of the Light Brigade in Crimea in 1854. Hartrick records the following about this print in 'A Painter's Pilgrimage', p219-20, "Pennell had interested Mr (afterwards Sir Robert) Donald, Editor of The Daily Chronicle, in a scheme to commemorate the Coronation festivities with a set of lithographs by members of the [Senefelder] Club, to be published first in the daily paper as zinc blocks, and later in a portfolio as lithographs for a memorial of it all . . .The one that fell to me was the last turn-out of the remnants of the Light Brigade (Balaclava Charge) saluting H.M. King George V in Fleet Street. Some weeks before hand, I was sent by car from the office of the paper to visit and draw portraits of the survivors as were living in or near London. Some were very feeble, and the trumpeter who sounded the charge indignantly refused "to be made an exhibition of", as he wrote. In this was I made drawings beforehand of six who were guaranteed to be equal to the occasion. On the actual day I was stationed in a ground floor window of The Daily Chronicle office in Fleet Street and made sketches of the background in colour, and finally saw the veterans brought out from The Daily Mail opposite, ten minutes before King George was to pass. The youngest was seventy-eight, the oldest eighty-seven, so it is not surprising that one or two turned faint and had to retire; but the majority were tough material still. A ragged line they made in spite of a stiff effort at martial "attantion". Many had the mutiny and other medals besides the Crimean, and their worn old faces were whiskered in the fashion of Commanding Officers of their time and some gave their salute in the old manner with the hand upright rather than horizontal."
London street scene with veteran soldiers of the Charge of the Light Brigade at the coronation of King George V. A line of moustached and bearded ex-servicemen, wearing coats, hats and war medals, salute as King George V (unseen) passes in his coronation parade along Fleet Street. In the background, on the left, are sightseers / revellers, union jacks, St George's flags, bunting and the facades of tall buildings, on the right, mounted horses in the parade, union jacks, the dome of St Paul's Cathedral and the spire of St Martin-within-Ludgate church. Drawn in lithographic crayon in a vigorous manner with detail for the faces and scratched highlights
