Book Review: Bonaparte and the British - Clayton & O'Connell

'Museums have exploited Napoleon's fame from 1815 to the present...'

Not only does the British Museum continue the above-mentioned tradition, it also owes its very existence, in its current form, to emulation of Napoleon's cultural legacy. [1] 

Bonaparte and the British is a sumptuously illustrated compendium of Napoleonic-themed visual delights, produced to accompany the show of the same name at the British Museum (the show runs from 5th Feb to 16th Aug, 2015). The vast majority of the exhibits, splendidly reproduced in this very handsome volume, are prints, a medium that was then enjoying a golden age in Britain.

In the background of Gillray's Slippery Weather we see Hannah Humphrey's

print-shop window. As ever an appreciative crowd is assembled to admire the

many topical caricatures, a good deal of which are Gillray's own designs.

The book begins, after a brief scene-setting introduction, with two short chapters about the British and French uses of prints at the time. Their titles, 'The London Print Trade: Commerce, Patriotism and Propaganda', and 'Napoleon and the Print as Propaganda' give you an idea of their general content, as well as signalling an intent to give an even-handed treatment to a traditionally partisan subject. After that the prints and other exhibits, 165 in total - beginning with a print of Napoleon as First Consul, and ending with a plaster cast of his death mask - are grouped into 10 sections, following the chronology of Napoleon's life during the tumultuous period of history which has subsequently borne his name:

The young general

Egypt

Consul and peacemaker

Little Boney and the invasion threat

Emperor

Trafalgar and Austerlitz: triumph and disaster

Spain and Russia

Leipzig and the collapse of empire

Peace of Paris, Elba and Waterloo

After Waterloo 

Canova's neo-classical portrait bust of Napoleon.

I don't know whether it's a change in me, a change in the institution of the BM itself, or something else entirely, but ever since hearing the museum's director, Neil MacGregor, present the absolutely wonderful series A History of the World in 100 Objects [2], I've found myself able to become interested in, even sometimes fascinated by, a far wider range of exhibits than I was before.

In the exhibition and this catalogue there are, as well as the very numerous prints, a number of ancillary objects, such as coins, medals, pottery and suchlike - even some genuine Napoleonic 'relics' - as well as a few examples of the more ordinary categories like drawings and sculpture, which, if you take the trouble to read about them, offer up all kinds of fascinating insights.

But the stars of the show are undoubtedly the beautifully reproduced prints. These range from earnestly pro-Napoleonic images, mostly but not exclusively French, via examples of straightforward classical allegory and beautifully depicted battle scenes, to the satirical prints of numerous nations, chiefly - and unsurprisingly given the title of the book and exhibition - British. The works of these British artists, and James Gillray's most of all, show very clearly why this is regarded as a golden age of English satirical printmaking.

The whole of The Plumb Pudding In Danger,

a cropped version of which appears of the

cover of this excellent book.

Gillray is undoubtedly the star of the earlier part of this period, with Cruikshank (son George, as opposed to father Isaac) perhaps taking over this position in the later stages. Gillray in particular, whose life story would make an interesting subject in itself, is confirmed as the master of the satirical print. His memorable images - 'The Plum Pudding In Danger' (above), for example, which features on the cover - are biting and exuberant: masterpieces of invention, design and execution, as well as fascinating studies in the attitudes of the day, they crown both book and show.

The modern notion, an idea that's only really held sway for a tiny proportion of the history of art, in which an artist is not only the maker of their art but the originator of the ideas, is dangerous when applied here. Gillray's first images show sympathy for the Enlightenment ideals of Revolutionary France, but the vast bulk of British satirical prints, including his, are very much the propaganda of the establishment Tory right. 

Whatever artists like Gillray felt personally, they were, for the most part, acting on the instructions and in the pay of the British establishment. Gillray himself, for example, being the recipient of a government 'pension'. This was actually a wage, and not what we think of as a pension: he was abandoned to poverty and insanity in the end! The text of Bonaparte and the British illuminates the close relationships between artists and politicians, with much of Gillray's most political work being very minutely directed by the high ranking Tory George Canning.

Maniac ravings: alas poor Gillray, twas he who

actually went insane, and not 'Little Boney'!

Some of the satirical printmakers lend their talents to polemicists on either side of the political divide, and there certainly were also dissenting voices. It's fascinating to view and read this material and contemplate the interplay between the apparent freedom of the prints to say many diverse and sometimes shocking things, and the reality of control and repression, a story played out in Britain and elsewhere (e.g. Czarist Russia) as well as Napoleonic Europe. [3] 

In some ways the Napoleonic wars are far from over: Andrew Roberts' recent Napoleon The Great seeks to rehabilitate Bonaparte for an English readership that can't quite shake off images - the 'Corsican Upstart' or 'Little Boney' - so assiduously fostered by much of the printed propaganda shown here. Confronted with page after page of the extravagantly exaggerated vitriol known as the 'Black Legend' it's hard not to conclude that Napoleon had become the repository for all the bilious outpourings of anti-enlightenment conservatism. 

Bonaparte's alleged atrocities are rehearsed and recited ad nauseum in many of the prints shown here, alongside frequent evocations of Napoleon as in league with Satan. It's hard not to feel that there was something rotten at the heart of establishment British attitudes towards Napoleon. It was this sort of material that helped turn William Cobbet from a royalist to a reformer: having been appalled at the way Napoleon was being caricatured, he would soon see himself mercilessly lampooned in the works of Gillray and others. 

George Cruikshank: Murat reviewing the Grand Army.

The powers on British right were merciless to their own perceived 'enemies within', such as Cobbett, or the Whig Charles James Fox (see Gillray's Tree of Liberty print, not in this book or show, but reproduced near the end of this post). Napoleon had hoped that he could win over the Ancien Regime powers, and be accepted into their circle, hence his marriage to Marie Louise. 

But ultimately, far from securing a place at the top table, Napoleon evolved into the official and remarkably singular focal point, at first metaphorically and finally, at the Congress of Vienna, literally, for the reactionary backlash of the Ancien Regime against Enlightenment ideas. [4] By making Bonaparte the fall guy, they were able to distract their own peoples from the backward looking autocratic natures of the regimes and social orders those same people were fighting and dying to uphold.

Rowlandson casts Bonaparte as the

spawn of Satan, in The Devils Darling.

A young civic Napoleon, in a watercolour

by Edouard Detaille, wearing the outfit of an

Academcian (This doesn't appear in the book). 

Napoleon's rise to prominence was achieved on the back of his successful defence of post-revolutionary France, so it could be argued that the Ancien Regime powers created him as much as Revolutionary France herself ever did. Who knows if Volney's description of the young Napoleon as 'member of the National Institute, peacemaker of Europe' might not have been a true and accurate description, had post-revolutionary France been left alone? 

Once the brief peace of Amiens ended, when England declared war on France, the perpetual assault on the country viewed as the hotbed of revolution by those Ancien Regime powers was resumed. They never let up until after Waterloo. Apart from a few debacles (in South America and Holland), Britain's active role was limited. Thanks to the audacity of Nelson, which cost him his life, we scored two notable naval successes. But on land our only sizeable contribution, until Waterloo (and even there we were only a small part of a mixed allied force) was the Iberian or Peninsular campaign, which didn't get off to the best of starts.

Gillray's amazing Grand Coronation Procession of Napoleone. Using the Italianate forms of Buonaparte's name was a favourite ruse of Boney-baiting Brit hacks. 

As Napoleon's French media liked to point out, England's chiefly role was as agitator and financial backer (see two prints down). It was the wars France's enemies continually made upon her, funded by British money (the need to fund these wars saw the introduction of income tax here in Britain) that raised Napoleon, and as long as Britain bankrolled successive coalitions - seven formed against France in this period - his gift for swift and decisive warmaking would help him become ever more powerful. So it could be argued that they effectively forced him into becoming the caricature warmonger they had always made him out to be.

On the other hand it has to be borne in mind that he himself said 'Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can maintain me'. But this was, I believe, something he said in his memoirs, when a lifetime of near continual conflict lay behind him. Napoleon also said that 'History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon'. It's interesting that, in relation to the history of his times, the argument rumbles on.

John Bull's Luncheon, another Gillray gem.

I've always felt mystified, even somewhat ashamed, at the way Britain has viewed it's roles in relation to both revolutionary America and revolutionary France: we lost our war with the U.S, and don't talk much about it. But we were instrumental in helping defeat a similar move towards more democratic society in France, and have crowed about it ever since. Of course there were those, from Fox and the Hollands to Byron and Cobbett, who felt at the time that there was something amiss in the caricatured vilification of Napoleon.

Fortunately the book and the show include both the official and the dissenting British views, as well as those of our allies and adversaries. And just as there was here, there was a diversity of opinion amongst the French, from royalists to Bonapartists, and beyond. The image of the British as a 'nation of slaves' fighting and financing wars to prevent the spread of liberty was a central plank in Napoleon's propaganda. This was a view rarely aired this side of The Channel, the or since. It's good that this show doesn't gloss over these other views.

Francois II Partant Pour La Guerre: an anonymous French

engraving shows a fat red-coated personification of Britain

handing Francis II of Austria a bag of money. The figure behind

the curtain talks of conserving British lives at the exepnse of

their allies' populations.

Tim Clayton and Sheila O'Connell have written a clear, informative, and fairly well balanced text. They go further than most British writers in pointing out the multiple readings of these histories that are possible. But it's still, as the exhibition's title says, a resolutely British story. More than the still-vexed politics, which continue to present a conundrum Britain and Europe struggle to solve, it's the pictures of prints and other objects that are the main attraction in this book: there are lots of fantastic memorable images here, as well as some that are less delightful but still very interesting. Gillray's work is what I enjoy looking at the most, even if I don't always like the propaganda he's peddling.

Francois Aubertin, Passage du Grand St. Bernard.

There are also some terrifically beautiful 'straight' prints, such as Francois Aubertin's Passage du Grand St. Bernard, a French print celebrating an early and audacious move by the young Napoleon, or Matthew DuBourg's Field of Waterloo, an incredible work that beautifully depicts a truly appalling scene, the bloody aftermath of the battle that ended Napoleon's career. Dubourg was of French extraction, but worked in England. It's interesting that his mixed cultural heritage resonates with the scene he depicts, in which the various nationalities are reduced to a common suffering. The Field of Waterloo is hardly the sort of triumphalist image that many in Britain favoured. 

Matthew Dubourg, The Field of Waterloo.

Of particular interest to wargamers, perhaps, in addition to the magnificent images by Aubertin and Dubourg (see above), is a series of panoramic Watercolours, painted only days after the battles at Waterloo and Quatre Bras. Rather ghoulishly corpses can be spotted here or there in the fields, and troops and civilians are also evident sparsely populating what had been only days before close-packed scenes of carnage. These watercolours show the battlefields as they were at the time, and would presumably be useful to gamers seeking to recreate the battle and the terrain, as no doubt many will attempt to do this year. [5]

This is a gem of a book, produced to accompany a fascinating show. I already had Mark Bryant's The Napoleonic Wars in Cartoon, which is a fun but comparatively superficial look at much of the same material. This gorgeous volume allows one to explore similar territory in much greater breadth and depth. I love it, and think it's an essential purchase for the Napoleonic history nut.

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Notes:

[1] P. 197:  'Earlier museums had been based on the personal collections of monarchs and aristocrats... Napoleon introduced the notion of a collection of treasures as a public asset that conferred prestige on the nation. The desire to emulate Napoleon's Louvre was at least part of the motive for parliament's support of the development of the British Museum...'

This particular image is not in the show or the book, but it

depicts a view of the British. popular in Napoleonic France,

as badly dressed and unable to relate properly to their

harridan womenfolk.

[2] This utterly brilliant series is available in several formats. Here are a few useful links:

--- The book (paperback from Amazon) - paperback

--- BBC podcasts (my favourite format!) - podcasts

--- And finally, here's a link to the BM page for AHOW - british museum

[3] France and the other European nations had their own traditions of printmaking and satire, and the balance between freedom and censorship outside the British Isles shows, in both similar and different ways, how Napoleonic France, its empire, and these other nations dealt with similar issues. But obviously the focus here is mostly on Britain and France, with other nations, Russia and Spain for example, being treated in a subsidiary manner.

Gillray's The Tree of Liberty: Whig politician Charles James Fox

earned the undying emnity of the Tory right for his liberal views.

Here he's taken on the guise of the Satanic serpent, tempting

John Bull. This is another image not actually in the book or show.

[4] There were those, from Lord and Lady Holland, to the poet Byron, who loved Napoleon. And even those critical of 'Jacobinism', like William Cobbett, found the excessivly propagandist vilification of an obviously enlightened man distasteful and dishonest. The book illustrates some Napoleonic 'relics' that once belonged to Byron, and quotes his anti-Wellingtonian views as expressed in Canto IX of Don Juan:

'The World, not the World's masters, will decide,

And I shall be delighted to learn who,

Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo?'

[5] Does anyone know if the observation derrick (behind the French lines) pictured in one of these images was erected before of after the battle?

Napoleon at The Fitz: An exhibition of Napoleonic themed prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (UK).

Simply title 1813, this lithograph by August Raffet helps mythologise the 'little corporal'. His ADC's are busy behind him, as he stands heroically beside a bivouac fire, as some ghostly bearskin wearing grenadiers march past.

Much to this old grognard's delight, an exhibition entitled Modern Heroism: Printmaking and the legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte is currently showing in a small room at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 

NB: Please note, the images that appear here are, unless otherwise indicated, taken on my iPad at the exhibition, and Photoshopped a little to improve the contrast, etc. Consequently they are not of museum display quality! If you want that, go see the show!

I've always had a soft spot for The Fitz, as this wonderful museum is known to many Cambridge locals.  But in all the time that I've been visiting the museum - and that goes way back to the years of my childhood - I've never known the institution to have held a show of any size, large or small, dedicated to the Napoleonic era.

A very nice lithographic version, by an artist called Victor Adam, and here simply called Chasseur (c.1825-9), of Gericault's hugely famous 1812 work The Charging Chasseur (sometimes also known, more fully, as An Officer of the Imperial Horse Guards Charging).

As a regular visitor to this venerable institution, which really feels like a London museum, having an exhibition dedicated to a passionate interest of my own feels like a dream come true. Actually Cambridge is spoiled, in that it has way more than normal the number of museums for a town of its size, many of which punch well above the average weight of your more common parochial town museum. The Fitz is the prime exemplar of this lucky situation, looking like a scaled down British Museum of sorts, replete with an impressive neo-classical façade, and some very regal lion statues.

The sort of print that might appeal to uniform buffs. Of course it would be more helpful if in colour!

I've been told more than once that these were models for some lions in London (Trafalgar Square... are there any lions there?). However, my Google researches threw up no such connections. But I did learn that according to old folklore 'when the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs’ clock strikes midnight, the Fitzwilliam Lions rise from their plinths and make their way to drink from the gutters that run along Trumpington Street, a few metres from where they sit'!

Bacchants Riding on Panthers, by Michelangelo, c.1506-08. Currently being displayed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (until August 2015). Photo credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum

Anyway, moving on from the lions, and glossing over the much more trumpeted Michelangelo sculptures that are currently on display (pictured above; you can read about there at the museum's website, or in this Guardian piece, if you like), let's get to the Napoleonic prints. The prints are culled from the museum's extensive collection, and number amongst them such illustrious and well known names as Delacroix and Gericault, both known for famous Napoleonic imagery, and the slightly later satirist, Daumier.

Pretty damn heroic! and living up to the exhibition title. This one's by Nicolas Toussaint Charlet, and is called At the second shot.

As much as I loved the work of these better known artists (and the British satirist Gillray even gets into the picture), the real delights for me were Charlet and Raffet, neither of whom I knew about until seeing this show. And there are of course many others.

Rather less heroic! At the first shot, by Charlet (1824). Perhaps this guy's not quite living up to the exhibitions title? [1]

Alas, the show is deemed, so it seems, to be too minor to merit a catalogue, or even any postcards. Damn shame! But the museum, which used to forbid photography, now allows it. So you can take snaps to your hearts content. I've catalogued the entire show and all the accompanying texts, for my own refence and general enjoyment, a small portion of which pics and info adorn this post.

'Serrez les rangs!' An veteran sergeant remains calm amidst the battlefield carnage. Listed at the Fitz as Close Ranks, by August Raffet (1831).

Most of these prints are actually post-Napoleonic, and some, like Le Réveil (1848), also by Raffet, clearly illustrate the sense of loss felt in France, with the passing of Imperial glory. Here a drummer summons dead soldiers to further glories in some sort of martial after-life!

The show began on February 3rd, and runs until 28th June. If you're anywhere Cambridge during this period, go and have a look. It's well worth it. If you do, drop me a line via the comments, and we can meet for a drink in the lovely café, and talk Napoleonic turkey.

The metropolitan French enjoyed print shop windows, much as their English contempories did. This one's by Pierre Nolasque Bergeret, and is called Dawdlers on the Rue Du Coq (1818).

An example of their print shop wares: this one by the famous painter Eugéne Delacroix, depicts a British soldier avec 'le bagage de campagne'!

Gillray's The Spanish bull fight, or the Corsican matador in danger (1808). Helping to prove that British satirical prints were a cut (across Boney's rump, in this instance), above French - or any other European country, for that matter - equivalents.

Each of the 30 main prints and ten supplementary prints - the 30 are ranged around the walls, the ten are in cabinets - has a small plaque conveying the basic information about it, plus there are also two general signboards, explaining basic stuff about the era, such as key dates, and simple summaries of the artisitic milieu and techniques used, etc.

It's a small but excellent show. I'd highly recommend going, should you be in or near Cambridge before the end of June.

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[1] Actually these two 'shot' prints were a pair: the featured soldier in both being one and the same man. In The first shot, which rather disingenuously comes second in my listing above, he's a combat virgin, cacking his breeches. But by The second shot he's become a true Napoleonic warrior!

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Painting Progress: AW 15mm Peninsular British

AW Miniatures peninsular Brits in 15mm (pic from their website), available from AW here.

Despite my youthful Waterloo fixation, once I'd started collecting wargaming miniatures seriously, in my teens, I was always more interested in what I saw as the 'main' campaigns, i.e. those between France and Austria, Prussia and Russia.

I built a French army, mostly for the Minifigs range, and convinced a couple of buddies to buy Austrians and Russians. Sadly the whole project stalled rather, and only I pursued my part with any vigour, in terms of painting and basing. The net result was that these collections were never gamed, and were ultimately sold off later (see earlier posts).

Gillray captures the British over-inflated sense of self-importance, with an over-inflated John Bull.

I still don't really know why (I have rough ideas, some already alluded to above, which I may go into in other posts), but I more or less shunned the campaigns the British were involved with - The Peninsular and Waterloo being the most obvious; back then I didn't know about the debacles of Walcheren or South America - regarding them as sideshows, and somehow feeling that there was something embarrassingly parochial about the British obsession witht their own relatively minor role in the land wars of the era.

More fabulous Gillray humour: in some (rear) quarters attitudes towards our (in)continental cousins have hardly changed!

As the Waterloo bicentennial looms though, I find the fascination with Waterloo returning. Actually I got back into it a while before I started thinking about 2015: I'm a bit hazy on the chronology of this wrong, but Barbero's The Battle, and Hofschröer's Wellington's Smallest Victory both played a part. I read them several years ago, in part to simply get some Napoleonic relief from the tidal wave of Russia 1812 material I was working through.

At one of the first of the wargame shows I went to, perhaps even the first, which might actually have been Derby World Wargames at Donnington, in 2011, I met and chatted with the owner and figure designer for AW miniatures, whose name escapes me now. A very friendly guy, we talked about how we got started with the hobby. I told him that I've always been something of a frustrated figure sculptor - having made plasticine armies as a kid, I'd also sculpted some Milliput miniatures, but not sufficiently well to feel confident enough to take it further - whilst he told me about his studies, which involved something to do with a mass Napoleonic grave site in, I think, Russia.

Couldn't find pics of the show (Salute 2011) in question, so here's one of your truly getting in the mood for Derby WW 2012!

Having enjoyed our conversation, and learning that his was a fairly new venture, I felt inclined to support his work, even though his miniatures, or the 15mm range at any rate, are for the Peninsular, a theatre I'm not really that into. So, despite this, I bought two bags of his minis, one of British line infantry, and one of French. Both designed for the Peninsular, and both saying they contained 24 figures. These subsequently remained on my living-room shelves for several years.

A couple of months back, with the commencement of reasonably serious efforts to make inroads on the lead-pile, and the beginnings of this blog (also coinciding with a return to further Waterloo themed reading), I would often look at the bags of AW figs, and think ruefully whether I really ought to have bought them. After all, they were a distraction from my 6mm and 10mm plans. But then, on a country walk at a local National Trust property - we're not well served for NT properties in this neck of the woods, but we are fortunate in having Wimpole Hall more or less on our doorstep - I came up with an idea that intrigued me: a 'what-if' Napoleon invades Great Britain story with a local twist.

One of the more far-fetched Invasion panic pictures.

Having worked on numerous aspects of this idea on and off for a while, and read a few books about the Great Invasion Scares, one of the threads began to coalesce around an idea for a battle fought locally (I won't go into detail here, I want to save that for future posts). And, as sometimes happens, these various strands started to cohere: what if I was to work towards wargaming some of these scenarios in 15mm, as skirmish type affairs? At this stage I hadn't thought that this would thereby make the AW purchases useful, that penny only dropped much more recently!

Anyroad, the upshot of all this is that I decided to paint the AW Brits as the 30th Regt of Foot, i.e. the Cambridge Regt. So I dug out my copy of Franklin's British Napoleonic Uniforms (and my Funcken, just in case), and looked them up. I was disappointed, as a drummer myself, that the drummers uniform info was lacking, but glad that between Franklin and the Funckens I had the kind of resources I needed. The 30th had pale yellow facings, and I decided to do the drummers in the generic reversed-tunic-and-facings manner, and ad-lib the lace in a generally period style, using the web and my books as inspiration.

I also determined that I would try a new painting approach. I would block in the colours, and use Quickshade, rather than mixing separate paint shades. I toyed with following the Tony Barton method - the essential fundamental of that being a white undercoat - but eventually went my normal matt black undercoat route. The AW miniatures are quite stocky, and I thought I might try and do them as simply as possible, in order to be quicker than I normally I am. But the level of detail on the sculpts is, as with most modern figures, quite high, so I ended up taking as long as ever!

Once the figures were blocked-in with the base colours, I took a deep breath... and went for it with the Quickshade. Personally I'm quite annoyed that Quickshade leaves the minis with a gloss finish (although, re a previous post on vintage figs, esp. Peter Gilder's stuff, this may come in handy, if I start collecting older minis), but I pressed on nonetheless. I didn't dip these, as the product suggests, but painted it on, as many people do. As anyone who uses it will know, it does pick out detail pretty well, but it also pools in places. 

Slapping it on quickly with a large brush, I was then able, with a thinner brush (best to use cheapo brushes for this; I'd learned via some preparatory viewing of YouTube that Quicksahde can ruin brushes), to remove the excess where it was pooling, in recessed areas. You need to do this pretty sharp-ish, as it does begin to thicken and dry quite rapidly. Aside from the gloss effect, I'm pretty pleased with the result. It's very different from building up light and shade with mixed colours, but for these figures I think it works okay.

The final stage, which I'll be doing today, is spraying some Testors lacquer over the whole lot. I'm just wondering whether I ought to retouch the bases first? As you can see from my pics, I've worked on the entire battalion stuck to one rather long bit of wood. I've been doing this for a number of units ever since I began painting again in earnest. This batch has convinced me - having dropped it several times, resulting in needing to glue figures back on and touch up paint damage (thankfully nothing worse!) - to go to something smaller. I bought a bag of hobbyist lolly sticks, and as the following picture shows, have based up and undercoated my AW French on these: four lolly sticks with six figs each does the pack of 24.

Talking of numbers, I was a bit confused, as I researched the Brits, about how to do them, in terms of centre and flank companies, etc. With 24 figs, 10 coys was awkward, so I plumped for doing the centre coys only. And then when I counted the minis, I found that instead of the 24 described in the bag, I actually had 26! Looking here, on the AW website, I see that there is only one visible officer and drummer, so I'm assuming that by some freak I was given a bag with two of these. I'll probably use them anyway, and leave out two of the marching infantry, as the officer and drummer add more colour and variety.

The French are based on their lolly-sticks and undercoated, so I'll hopefully do them soon as well. I may also share my thoughts on these AW minis in a review style appraisal as well. But before I do the 'The Frogs', I need to get back to my 6mm (& 10mm!). Indeed, I need to do a stock take, and see how much work lies ahead of me. Despite this recent and unprecedented burst of painting - I should count up how many I've done (like many of us wargamers, and the Vampire on Sesame Street, I love to count!) - I have a very strong feeling it's only a tiny proportion of the whole!