Despite his name, Desanges was a London artist, born in 1822. His antecedents were French and aristocratic, his great-grandfather, the Marquis Desanges, had settled in England in 1742 as a political exile. The artist was willing, when it seemed useful, to exploit his claim to the title chevalier. Desanges was an aspirant History painter, competing unsuccessfully in the Westminster Hall competition. He was also unsuccessful in getting such works as his Excommunication of Robert, King of France, etc. hung, at the Royal Academy. He abandoned history for portraiture and showed his first work at the RA in 1846.... it was through his practice as a portrait painter that he began his series of battle pictures.... Desanges’ intention was to depict the incidents which had won the Victoria Cross for its holders. The pictures were done at high speed: the first award ceremony took place in Hyde Park in June 1857, and Desanges exhibited the first twenty-four works at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in April 1859.... By 1862, when the full series was exhibited at the Crystal Palace, he had completed fifty pictures....the series must have been the best-known images of war around the mid-century. [Hichberger, Images of War, 63-64]
Desanges’s work was extremely influential upon the battle painters who worked in the 1870s, providing as he did the formula of close-up focus on a dramatic incident which allowed a psychological study of heroic national character. [Hichberger, Images of War 67]
The series of Crimean and Indian episodes paintings by Mr. Desanges, and called the Victoria Cross Gallery, having been removed hither from the Egyptian Hall, a marked and varied feature to the collection. These very interesting pictures are fifty-three in number, though it is not much beyond five years since Mr. Desanges commenced the task, having exhibited the first pictures of the set twelve months after commencement. ["The Picture Gallery at the Crystal Palace," 145]
Biographical Material
Works
- Hugh Talbot Burgoyne (1833–1870), and Cecil William Buckley (1830–1872) (Buckley was the first person to be awarded the Victoria Cross)
- Surgeon Anthony Dickson Home and Assistant Surgeon William Bradshaw, 90th Regiment of Foot (Perthshire Volunteers) (Light Infantry), Lucknow, 1857
Bibliography
Bryan, Michael. A Biographical and Critical Dictionary of Painters and Engravers.... Edited by George Stanley. London: George Bell, 1878. Google Books. Free ebook.
Hichberger, Joany. "Democratising Glory? The Victoria Cross Paintings of Louis Desanges." Oxford Art Journal 7/2 (1984): 42-51. Accessed via Jstor. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360292.
Hichberger, J.W.M. Images of War: The Military in British Art, 1814-1915. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988.
"The Picture Gallery at the Crystal Palace." The Art-Journal II (July 1863): 145. Internet Archive. Web. 29 August 2024.
Created 29 August 2024