Albuhera

This watercolour by Richard Simkin depicts the Royal Fusiliers as they should have looked, with their dress uniforms and fur caps, all in pristine condition. But during the Peninsula War the troops were, by this time, in a ragged and dirty condition. The French artillery points menacingly at the advancing British but there is no smoke coming from the barrels, and no heaps of dead bodies as one would expect to see in a painting of one of the bloodiest battles of that war. But it is a well executed painting and conveys the regimental spirit of the Fusiliers in this defining battle.