In 1815, Rochard went to Brussels to escape conscription and through an introduction from the Spanish Ambassador, General Count Don Alva, a friend of the Duke of Wellington, was commanded to paint a portrait of the Duke for King Ferdinand VII of Spain. On the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, Rochard went to the Anglo-allied headquarters and painted the Duke. In fifty minutes, he painted three watercolour sketches of different poses which he later worked up into portraits for which he charged Wellington 120 francs each. A list of recorded portraits of Wellington by Rochard is in V. Remington (supra) and includes a version which belonged to the sister of Georgiana de Ros, Lady Louisa Tighe (d. 1900), sold Christie's, London, 25 May 2004, lot 189.
Georgiana de Ros née Lennox was one the daughters of the Duchess of Richmond who held the famous Waterloo Ball on the eve of the battle. The present lot was given by the Duke of Wellington to Lady Georgiana, whose description of the occasion is recorded by her daughter, The Hon. Mrs J. R. Swinton, in A Sketch of the Life of Georgiana, Lady de Ros, London, 1893, p. 133: 'At the ball supper I sat next to the Duke of Wellington, when he gave me an original miniature of himself, painted by a Belgian artist'. On 22 June 1815, following the battle of Waterloo, Georgiana wrote from Brussels to her aunt Lady Georgiana Bathurst about the aftermath of the battle and mentioned that 'The Duke has given me a miniature of himextremely like, I am so pleased with it'. On 28 June the Duke of Wellington wrote to 'Dearest Georgy' from Orvillé, proposing she had a copy made of the miniature he had given her, writing, 'If you give your picture, the painter will change it, therefore you should sit with it while he copies it.' On 13 July, Wellington wrote again to Georgiana, from Paris, saying, 'I don't care how many copies the painter makes of the picture. As you liked it, however, I recommend it to you not to trust it in his hands' (The Hon. Mrs J. R. Swinton, op. cit., pp. 138-139).