A watercolour showing Queen Victoria standing on a dais in the corner of the Quadrangle at Windsor Castle, pinning a medal on the breast of her son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught; the Prince of Wales and other members of the royal family stand behind her, and officers and men of the army, navy and Indian contingent are drawn up on the parade ground. Signed and dated bottom right: Orlando Norie 1883.

This watercolour depicts the queen investing officers and soldiers who fought in the Second Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882 with medals at Windsor Castle on 21 November 1882. Three days previously Victoria had reviewed the troops returned from Egypt, who were headed by her third son Prince Arthur, an army officer who had served in the war, at St James’s Palace. See also RCINs 2501626, 2501627, 2501628 and 2501629 for photographs of the men taken on 24 November on the castle terrace.

The 1870s saw a period of deteriorating relations between the British Empire and Egypt amid a developing Egyptian nationalist movement discontented with external intervention in the country’s infrastructure and operation. Following riots in Alexandria on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, where British and French naval forces were already present, in July 1882 the British launched a naval bombardment of the city and went on to seize the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal, which had opened in 1869, was of significant strategic interest to Britain as it offered a new and considerably shorter route to India. After several smaller conflicts, the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir on 13 September 1882 resulted in the British taking power in Egypt, though ostensibly it was an independent country ruled by the Khedive (Viceroy). Egypt became a British protectorate in 1914 and was then granted nominal independence by the British in 1922; the Republic of Egypt was declared in 1953.

Orlando Norie was born into a well-known Scottish artistic family but spent much of his working life in France. He is particularly known as a painter of military scenes, and had a long-lasting professional relationship with the printsellers and publishers Ackermann & Co who managed his picture sales and published lithographs after his drawings, beginning with scenes of Crimean battles in the 1850s. He is not thought to have travelled outside of Europe, and therefore his scenes of colonial military action are not personal eye-witness accounts. The significant group (c.70) of watercolours by Norie now in the Royal Collection primarily came from two sources - Queen Victoria, via purchase or commission, and at least eighteen which were previously in the collection of Prince Arthur and given to the Royal Collection after his death in 1942.