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Joseph Cundall
[Grenadier Guards Drummer]
[Crimean Heroes (?)]
1856 (ca)
Salted paper print, from glass negative
23.1 x 17.4 cm (9 1/8 x 6 7/8 ins) (image) 41.5 x 31.9 cm (16 5/16 x 12 9/16 ins) (mount)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2011, Accession Number: 2011.422
LL/73879
Curatorial description (accessed: 16 March 2017)
This image of a young drummer is likely from the “Crimean Heroes” series commissioned by Queen Victoria at the conclusion of the Crimean War. While some portraits in the series show soldiers injured in battle, Allen (likely his family name, inscribed on the mount) stands proud and tall in his full regalia, seemingly innocent of the horrors of the Crimean War battles best recalled by Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
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