John Charlton Military Prints

Charlton was a prominent painter of battle pictures and a frequent illustrator for The Graphic although he did not serve as a war artist. In London he studied under John Dawson Watson, one of the leading illustrators of the mid-nineteenth century. Charlton's particular talent was the depiction of horses whether on the racecourse, in the hunt, or on the battlefield, and his battle pictures which were exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Paris Salon nd elsewhere, generally include horses charging or hauling guns, although in three interesting pictures which are unlocated, After the Battle: Sedan, Bad news from the Front, and Abandoned, Charlton produced scenes almost devoid of human figures after a failed charge. The only figure is a dead cuirassier and his mount lying where they have fallen. Thomas Jones Barker exhibited a similar scene in 1873 - now in Southampton Art Gallery. The second work took as its theme an incident from the Suakim campaign of March 1885 and was based on a sketch by Surgeon N C Ross of the Royal Marines. Ross described seeing a number of horses of th Bengal Lancers galloping back to headquarters in confusion, leaving the observers to conclude that a terrible disaster had befallen McNeill's advance column. The final picture based on a true incident depicts horses abandoned on the seashore by the British Army during the Peninsular War. His subjects ranged from the Charge of the Light Brigade for which he painted two scenes, one of which was based on a sketch by a participant, Lord Tredegar, the Battle of Sedan, the wars of the 1880s in Egypt and Sudan, Ulundi and the Boer War. While focusing on contemporary events, he painted several scenes from history including Montrose's march from Inverlochy and General Seydlitz at the Battle of Rossbach (in 1914 the picture was interned in Germany and has not been seen since). Rossbach was the theme for a previous picture exhibited in 1903 showing the charge of the Prussian cavalry. In 1889, he was awarded a third class medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, for a painting depicting an episode in the Sudan War. The Great War was immensely painful for him as he lost two sons, both described as exceptionally promising young men. He did not live to see the peace, dying in November 1917. The two main paintings to emerge from the war both exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1915 highlighted the suffering of horses in war: French Artillery crossing the flodded Aisne (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle) and Retreat from the Marne (Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead) showing German cavalry and artillery escaping in confusion from the allied guns. Another work from the war was The Charge of the Lancers exhibited at the Naval and Military Exhibition in 1915.