The Duke of Wellington’s favourite portrait of himself — painted five years after his victory at the Battle of Waterloo

The artistic gifts of Sir Thomas Lawrence were apparent from an early age. As a boy, he saved his father, a West Country innkeeper, from bankruptcy by selling pastel portraits of local gentry.

When barely out of his teens, he was invited to Windsor Castle to paint Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III. He would go on to establish himself as the pre-eminent portraitist of his age, his array of subjects amounting to a who’s who of Regency society. Lord Liverpool (the prime minister), Sir John Soane (the architect) and Sir Walter Scott (the writer) all sat for him.

One of his finest works was this portrait of the Duke of Wellington, a few years after the military hero’s triumph over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. That was the view of Wellington himself, who deemed the picture ‘as good as any Lawrence ever painted’.

On 30 June 2026, the portrait comes to auction in London, the highlight of Christie’s Old Masters Evening Sale during Classic Week in London.

Lawrence and Wellington were born little more than a fortnight apart: in April and May 1769 respectively. The pair were in their early fifties when the former worked on the latter’s portrait, painting it over the course of several months in 1820.

As was his wont, Lawrence met his subject’s gaze full on. He captures the duke’s facial features, his blue eyes and long, strong nose, with liveliness and precision.

Wellington is revealed as a man of integrity, refinement and aristocratic poise. His military career was now all but behind him, and had included a string of victories in India and Spain, before his most famous feat: triumph at Waterloo on 18 June 1815, a battle described by Victor Hugo as ‘the hinge of the 19th century’.

Alongside the Prussian commander Gebhard von Blücher, Wellington led a coalition of allied forces to resounding victory over the French, precipitating Napoleon’s abdication a few days later and bringing definitive peace to Europe for the first time in more than two decades.

Given all this, it’s understandable that, in his first paintings of Wellington, Lawrence chose to represent his subject heroically. He executed a total of eight portraits of the Duke between 1814 and 1829 (the last of which was never finished).

The earliest examples are full-length and grand in scale — such as the canvas today part of the Royal Collection, showing its subject proudly holding aloft the Sword of State and adorned with the multiple honours bestowed upon him by Europe’s grateful rulers.

The painting coming to auction — the artist’s fifth of his subject — is different. There is a certain intimacy to it. Wellington is captured in civilian clothes rather than military uniform. Only the inclusion of the red Insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece attests to his military past.

One reason for this is that the portrait was commissioned, it is believed, by Wellington’s close friends, Harriet and Charles Arbuthnot. The former was a diarist and political hostess, who presided over society dinners held at Wellington’s London residence, Apsley House; the latter was a diplomat and politician who, at the time of the commission, was joint secretary to the Treasury.

On seeing the finished portrait, Harriet recorded in her diary that she was ‘delighted’, explaining that while ‘all other pictures of [Wellington] depict him as a hero, this portrait has all the softness and sweetness of countenance which characterises him when he is in the private society of his friends’.

The duke himself was so fond of the portrait that, for many years, he used a mezzotint of it (by the printmaker Samuel Cousins) when wishing to share a likeness of himself with friends and admirers.

The early 1820s marked a particularly busy — and successful — period for Lawrence, when he was asked to produce the coronation portrait of King George IV, and was elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts.

It was at that institution’s annual exhibition, in 1822, that his new portrait of Wellington was shown publicly for the first time — to great acclaim. The reviewer in the high-society magazine La Belle Assemblée wrote that ‘we have never witnessed so fine a likeness of England’s matchless hero. The eye is so uncommonly well delineated, so expressive, so truly characteristic of the valorous spirit that actuates the original… This exquisite picture can never be forgotten.’

One might praise Lawrence’s fluent, rapid brushwork, too, which invites comparison with that of Diego Velázquez before him and John Singer Sargent after.

The artist’s fame soon extended to mainland Europe. In the mid-1820s, he showed numerous works at the Paris Salon, and was even awarded the Legion of Honour by the French state. He was feted for helping to overturn the restrictions of classicism that had long dominated painting in France.

Eugène Delacroix was among his many fans. The writer Stendhal went so far as to claim that ‘the English manner enjoys a triumph in Paris… Mr Lawrence’s name is immortal.’

The artist died in 1830, four years before Harriet Arbuthnot. Her husband Charles would live out the remaining 16 years of his life in Wellington’s company at Apsley House.

As for the portrait, it remained in the possession of the Arbuthnot family until being sold at Christie’s in 1878. It was acquired there by the politician Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, who married the heiress Hannah de Rothschild that same year, and would go on to become prime minister in 1894.

The portrait was sold on two subsequent occasions — both at Christie’s auctions, in 1939 and 2006. It was purchased at the latter by Sir Robert Ogden, a businessman, philanthropist, art collector and racehorse owner from Yorkshire. Ogden was instrumental in transforming London’s Docklands, and also supported a range of charitable causes before passing away in 2022.

Lawrence’s portrait of Wellington was one of the star exhibits in Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance, a major exhibition of the artist’s work at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2010-11. The show later travelled to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

It’s worth noting that Wellington embarked on a political career in the latter part of his life, becoming prime minister, in fact, between 1828 and 1830. Although this wasn’t as illustrious as his military career, he did have a number of successes — such as overseeing Catholic emancipation, which granted unprecedented political rights to Roman Catholics in the UK.

Upon his death in 1852, Queen Victoria called Wellington ‘the greatest man our country ever produced’. To this day, he has an arch in central London, a type of footwear, the capital city of New Zealand, a beef dish, a redwood tree, and a school in Berkshire named after him.

The duke sat for myriad artists over the years — among them Francisco de Goya, who painted his portrait in Madrid in 1812. It is Lawrence’s depictions, however, that have defined Wellington in visual terms for posterity, and the example coming to auction was the duke’s favourite among those.

It’s an image that penetrates his aura of heroism, and captures a sense of his humanity: arguably the greatest statesman of the day painted by arguably the greatest portraitist.

Portrait of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, K.G., K.B., M.P. (1769-1852), bust-length, in civilian dress with a military cloak, wearing the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece will be on view at Christie’s in London, 26-30 June 2026

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