Yet another Battalion of Infantry ready for the tabletop; this time the 2nd Battalion of the 58th Rutlandshire Regiment of Foot from the Tennant Collection.
British regiments during the Peninsular War were rarely reinforced, so often fell below strength. The Rutlandshire Regiment will take to the field with thirty figures as opposed to the normal 36.
The brass (Correction - Mr. Tennant has informed me they were actually made from Dutch Colgate toothpaste tube metal - well scrubbed I hope!) flags were beautifully hand painted by Mr. Tennant, but did require some touch up. The end result is quite nice as I was able to add some highlights.
The light company
The Grenadier Company
The white paint on these figures had yellowed a bit with age, so I did an extensive highlighting with bright white to compensate, which had the effect of adding some nice dimensionality to the figures.
These fine fellows turned out so well I think next I will do one of the most famous regiments, the 92nd Gordon Highlanders. I am paint stripping some extra DK figures I received to add a couple of infantry figures to bring the unit up to a 36 figure unit. I have also identified an unpainted DK brigade commander who is due for a head transplant to serve as Gordon himself.
Nice - more of that intimidating lace though... I particularly like the nonchalant standard bearers with their colours half furled especially as the Regimental design is my favourite - the Cross of St George... But I thought that was only for regiments with white facings? I shall have to look it up.
ReplyDeleteHas the Tennant collection any Lt Dragoons with orange facings, if so I'd love to see them.
No such luck Rob. Red and yellow facings for the two regiments of light dragoons in the collection. As for the regimental flag with the cross of St. George, I don't know, but in terms of accuracy I would trust Mr. Tennant's work as gospel. He did an amazing amount of research on these.
ReplyDeleteGosh! While the general rule seems to say the regimental colour would be black (facing) colour with a red cross of St George it seems there's a lot of debate on whether this was followed. While there is apparently a Maori War vintage 58th black colour in NZ the weight of opinion (unfortunately w/o quoted sources) is that both the drummers reversed colours and the regimental colour were white as black was though inappropriate? Perhaps not wanting to be confused with that Blücher chap and all his black flags. So as you said it looks like Mr Tennant knew what he was about. They're still my favourite British Regimental flag design.
DeleteThanks Ian, These really came out well and I am excited to get more units into the pipeline and onto the tabletop!
ReplyDeleteThey look lovely David...
ReplyDeleteI am a big fan of Napoleonics... but I don’t paint as much as I should... mostly because of the ridiculous amount of fiddly bits...
Mind you I suspect that that is what makes them so attractive.
All the best. Aly
Aly,
DeleteThat is exactly why I am so grateful to Mr. Tennant for this collection. It is great fun to be able to just spruce these up a bit as opposed to painting all of those fiddly bits from scratch!
Absolutely stunning, but then all your regiments are, David.
ReplyDeleteHave you been able to discern how DT makes the shoulder wings on the elite companies? I've always been slightly annoyed by Marcus Hinton's failure to produce these!
Yours, WM
I had always assumed they were cast on, as I have never seen unpainted HH British. In looking at the highlanders I can clearly see the wings are just painted on as an extension of the tufts. For the line infantry with shouldered arms they appear to be cast on or DT did an amazing job with putty!
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