Seated three quarters, his cocked hat on his knees, the venerable Lord Raglan strikes a pose.
Wellington's former aide-de-camp stares into the distance with a dull gaze, his only Waterloo survivor arm folded with dignity over his chest, while Roger Fenton (1819-1869) draws his portrait in damp collodion, one more ancient processes of photography.
The veteran of the Napoleonic wars accommodates himself to pass to posterity in the embrasure of a door, in front of the decayed wall of a rustic building;
one does not find much better at the headquarters of the British, French and Ottoman forces which since autumn besiege the Russian place of Sebastopol.
The weary and inconvenient truth of the scene remains today the last reflection from beyond the grave of a man carried away by cholera less than a month after this cliché.
Wise and harmless paintings
There is no shortage of ghosts of this kind in the Château de Chantilly.
His graphic arts cabinet is hosting an exhibition of around forty prints on paper until February 27.
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