The Defence of Rorke's Drift. 1880. 120.2 x 214.0 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external); 155.7 x 250.5 x 12.5 cm (frame, external). Signed and dated: 18 EB 80. Courtesy of the © Royal Collection Trust. RCIN 405897.
This is a difficult painting to respond to, because of its obvious connection with colonialism. It depicts an episode in Natal, during the Anglo-Zulu war in South Africa. In January 1879, a single regiment held out against a massive attack on a mission station (named after James Rorke, an Irishman who had traded from what was once a farm here). Part of the station was now being used as a field hospital. The soldiers made a makeshift barricade of "bags and biscuit-boxes" (Meynell 12) to try to keep back as many as 4,000 Zulus, seasoned and recently victorious in battle, advancing under the command of a Zulu Prince. "At all sides they penetrated the barricade, to be repulsed at the point of the bayonet. The morning dawned, and Rorke’s Drift had still been held; Lord Chelmsford’s force was seen approaching, and Rorke’s Drift was saved (Meynell 12). In resisting the enemy, eleven men won Victoria Crosses for their bravery, an extraordinary number for a small contingent at a single encounter.
Detail showing the range of men involved in the defence, differentiated by their uniforms; also, the various types and stages of involvement, from command to reinforcement, to the care of the fallen.
Such a (literally) fiery engagement was not the kind of subject that Lady Butler would have chosen herself: but she was working under the pressure of a royal commission to paint a recent rather than an historic episode, and this one was being treated (she says rather drily) "as though it had been a second Waterloo" (187). So she set to, and prepared as thoroughly as usual, even going to see the regiment at Portsmouth, watching a reenactment, and making sketches of the men in the very "uniforms they wore on that awful night." The result, she said, "was that I reproduced the event as nearly to the life as possible" (188). Struggling to recreate the effects of fire and smoke from the burning building, and the difficulty of suggesting the Zulu attackers (whom, incidentally, she also terms "heroic," 188), she still managed to present good, identifiable likenesses of the men who won VCs, and others present in the melee.
What comes across is a grim mixture of grit, determination, physical effort — and confusion. Men move frantically in different directions or support those staggering back to the burning field hospital; one rears up dramatically, hit in the very action of giving a fallen comrade a drink. Another, hurrying forward with an armful of supplies, already seems to have been injured in the other arm, while yet another very youthful-looking soldier lies on the ground, his head pillowed on a sandbag. Since the defence is still going on, there is no sense at all of triumphing over the enemy, rather, of desperate effort against huge odds. Yet what was important here was the bravery and endurance involved, and the painting, like the action itself, was much admired. The Queen was delighted, describing it in her journal entry of 13 March 1880, before it was even completed, as "Mrs Butler's beautiful picture, (mine)." We would be unlikely to use that adjective to describe it now, but it certainly captures, with dynamic immediacy, the trauma of warfare.
Note
Our Senior Editor, Simon Cooke, writes: "The regiment defending the mission was the 42nd foot/South Wales Borderers based in Sennybridge, Brecon, with a contingent of just 200 men. My ancestors lived in the small village where some of the soldiers came from." Nothing could better remind us of how this artist strove to convey her response to war, not through the celebrated leaders whose names have gone down in history, but through the ranks they commanded.
Links to Related Material
- The British Empire in Africa during the Age of Victoria
- Louis Desanges's painting of a similarly fiery action involving men who were awarded VCs: Surgeon Anthony Dickson Home and Assistant Surgeon William Bradshaw, 90th Regiment of Foot (Perthshire Volunteers) (Light Infantry), Lucknow, 1857
Bibliography
Butler, Elizabeth. An Autobiography. London: Constable, 1922. Internet Archive, from a copy in Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Web. 29 November 2024.
The Defence of Rorke's Drift (with useful commentary). Royal Collection Trust. Web. 30 November 2024.
Meynell, Wilfrid. The Life and Work of Lady Butler. London: The Art-Journal, 1898. Internet Archive, from a copy in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 30 November 2024.
Queen Victoria's Journals (open access in UK).
Created 29 November 2024