For some inexplicable reason the National Portrait Gallery, of which I am a trustee, doesn’t have a significant portrait of the Duke of Wellington. There’s one rather stiff picture in oil by Robert Home from when he was a young soldier in India and a few watercolours of him in retirement, but weirdly none at all of the vigorous statesman and victor of Waterloo at the height of his prestige and powers. This is astounding considering that — apart from the Duke of Marlborough — Wellington was by far the greatest soldier Britain has ever produced, and moreover one who went on to become prime minister.
Imagine the excitement in the gallery, therefore, when the opportunity arose to buy one of the greatest portraits of the Iron Duke ever made, nothing less than the last of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s iconic pictures of him, painted in 1829 when he was prime minister.
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