The Boer War

Caton Woodville is perhaps best known as a painter of Napoleonic subjects, but he regularly showed scenes of contemporary relevance at the Royal Academy. The year before this painting was executed he produced 'God Bless You, Tommy Atkins', a painting showing a private soldier retrieving a wounded Sikh colleague from heavy fire from the Dervish followers of the Mahdi. Equally designed to arouse heroism and patriotic fervour, the present picture depicts an encounter between a cavalryman and a Dutch Boer in South Africa.