The State Hermitage Museum: Exhibitions

Portrait of the Duke of Wellington

George Dawe

1829

Oil on canvas

Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), field marshal (from 1813), the Duke of Wellington (from 1814), was a British military commander and statesman. In the portrait painted for the War Gallery of 1812 the Duke is shown in the uniform of a British field marshal with the sashes, stars and badges of the Russian Orders of St Andrew the First-Called and St George 1st class and the Austrian Order of the Golden Fleece.

Arthur Wellesley was the son of the Irish peer Lord Garret Colley-Wesley, the Earl of Mornington. He opted for a military career in his youth and rapidly moved up the service ladder: by the age of 25 he was already a lieutenant-colonel. He got his baptism of fire in 1794 when he participated in military operations against the forces of republican France in the Low Countries.

Between 1796 and 1805 Wellesley served in India. On his return to Britain he was knighted and in 1806 he was elected to parliament. The following two years he held the post of Secretary of State for Irish Affairs.

In 1810 Wellesley returned to military service and between then and 1813 he commanded the allied forces on the Iberian peninsula who were opposing the French army that had invaded Portugal from Spain. Wellesley gained a number of major victories in the Peninsular War including the defeat of the French Marshal Junot at Vimiero, the taking of the city of Oporto and forcing Soult, one of Napoleon's best marshals, to retreat, the capture of the fortress city of Badajoz and forcing the enemy to withdraw to Madrid. The decisive encounter of the Peninsular War, the Battle of Vitoria, took place on 21 June 1813. For his victory Wellesley was promoted to field marshal and returned to London in triumph. In recognition of his services he was awarded the title of duke.

Wellington's finest moment in the struggle against Napoleonic France still lay ahead. This time he was fated to fight against the Emperor himself. When Bonaparte returned to France from Elba and took possession of Paris, Field Marshal Wellington was appointed commander-in-chief of the allied Anglo-Dutch army. It assembled in Belgium where there was one more allied army - the Prussian force commanded by Field Marshal Blucher.

The decisive battle took place at Waterloo, south of Brussels, on 18 June 1815. Together with the Prussians, who joined him in time to decide the issue, Wellington inflicted a crushing defeat on Napoleon's army. After the battle the allied armies advanced into an already defeated France and reoccupied its capital.

The victory at Waterloo brought Wellington new honours and awards. In 1815, for example, he was made a Russian field marshal and awarded the highest military decoration of the Russian Empire - the Order of St George 1st class. Wellington took part in the work of the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, when the European monarchs divided Napoleon's immense empire up between them.