Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch

Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners Reading the Waterloo Dispatch of 1822 was the most popular painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in the decade after Waterloo, depicting the veterans of the Royal Hospital Chelsea receiving the news of the great victory in various states of emotion — relief, grief, excitement, and pride. The painting was commissioned by the Duke of Wellington himself and assembled an extraordinary variety of character types — veterans of different battles, ages, and nationalities — creating a social panorama of British military experience. Crowds were so dense before it at the Royal Academy that a protective barrier was erected, the first in the Academy's history.

Wilkie renders dozens of individual characters with portrait-like precision, each reacting differently to the momentous news. The warm, golden lighting and the animated composition create a vivid narrative of communal joy and relief.