ABSTRACT
Other essays in this book will have demonstrated that there were many coexisting constructions o f national character in patriotic iconography. The aim here will be to show how a special form o f visual representation, academic painting, as one o f a network o f forms, helped to construct an image o f ‘patriotism’ in relation to the old soldier. The quality o f ‘patriotism’ in a serving soldier was defined in terms o f discipline and loyalty - to the regiment, to the army and to the monarch. In simplest terms, military patriotism was manifested in support for the status quo. It is in relation to this concept o f patriotism that representations o f the ex-soldier, the veteran, will be considered. It will be argued that, far from being neutral ‘stock characters’ in genre paintings, ex-soldiers in early nineteenth-century Britain were potent symbols o f the potential violence o f the mob, and that their political ambiguity, as former soldiers in the recent wars and as uncontrolled fighting men, precluded their representation in academic art. In the period from the end o f the Waterloo campaign in 1 8 1 5 until the decade o f the Crimean War, the 185 0s, the only representations o f veterans were in the form o f physical cripples, or, more typically, in the guise o f Chelsea Pensioners, a group whose political allegiance and ‘patriotism’ was believed to be beyond dispute. 1
From the 185 0s the ‘com m on soldier’, and by extension the veteran, was rehabilitated in ruling-class m ythology. The Crimean War was crucial in this change in perception. The problem o f the veteran as a threat to political stability was succeeded by concern about the social deprivation he represented. In the 185 0s represen tations o f non-Chelsea veterans began to appear regularly at the Royal Academy exhibition, for the first time since the 1800s .2 The veteran was portrayed as a symbol o f the ‘deserving poor’, worthy because o f his ‘patriotic’ military service.
