Original watercolour illustration, with measurements, captioned 'Drill Motions', and docketed 'Drill Motions at Bunhill Fields'.

Author: 
[the Honourable Artillery Company; Bunhill Fields; the City of London; military drill manual; the British Army]
Publication details: 
Anonymous and undated. [Circa 1810?]
£200.00
SKU: 7471

On one side of a piece of wove paper roughly 28.5 x 24 cm. On aged, somewhat grubby paper, with 6 cm closed tear repaired with tape on reverse. Full-length diagrammatic depiction of a British army officer in uniform of the Napoleonic period (black boots with spurs, tight white breeches, green jacket with yellow trim and black hat with red plume), holding his sword horizontally in front of his face. A set of thirteen numbered angles are projected from the tip of the blade, some bracketed 'all these are strait in Front'. Others are described as 'flat'. Captioned at head 'Drill Motions.' The numbering and handwriting would appear to be in a hand contemporary with the plate, but the item is either a forgery, or it has been touched up in recent decades, as the border, plume and some highlighting would appear to be in red felt-tip pen. Docketed at the foot, in a twentieth-century hand, 'DRILL MOTIONS AT BUNHILL FIELDS.' The Honourable Artillery Company (the oldest regiment in the British Army) has its old parade ground abutting Bunhill Fields near the City of London.