For a time after buying Apsley House from his brother in 1817, Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852) showed an interest in decorating his house with reliefs by Thorvaldsen, though this interest did not result in any commissions. Luigi Fabri’s etching shows Wellesley wearing the Order of the Bath, which he received in 1804 for his military achievements in India. He later became a national hero when together with the German Marshall Gebhard Leberecht Blücher (1742-1819) he defeated Napoleon at Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
The printed portrait has a grainy character reminiscent of chalk drawings. The fact that the etching is vernis mou means that the motif is drawn in a very soft, sticky layer of wax spread on the plate with which the print is to be made. The drawing emerges as grooves in the wax and the lines are therefore rather less sharply drawn. By means of a chemical process, the lines are then etched into the metal printing plate – as in other etching techniques. While etching has been used as a method of printing since the beginning of the 16th century, vernis mou etching is a later invention from the early 18th century.
