Alexander Macdonald

Christie's London, 25 May 2010, lot 151

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854, first stanza

This powerful Victorian portrait bust represents the same sitter as another by Lawrence Macdonald (1799-1778), dated 1855, in the British Embassy at Istanbul (UK Government Art collection; inv. no. 16263). The present bust evidently shows the sitter at a more advanced age.

Lord Cardigan was a British Army officer who commanded the Light Brigade during the Crimean War, leading the famous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava.

The Victorian court sculptor Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834-1890) was responsible for the double tomb monument to Lord Cardigan and his wife, which is famous for the peer's incomparable whiskers. The tomb is in St Peters Church at Deene, Northamptonshire, the Brudenell family estate.