Trooper of the 9th Lancers riding, with an Afghan soldier running beside his horse, 1880

Watercolour by Captain Robert Gosset Woodthorpe, RE and Captain Thomas Hungerford Holdich, RE.

This painting is a companion piece to a work by an Afghan artist that was painted around the time of the First Afghan War (1838-1842) for an unknown Afghan patron. It showed a mounted Afghan sirdar with a British soldier running alongside. The latter work was found by Major-General Sir (later Field Marshal Lord) Frederick Roberts in Amir Sher Ali's palace in Kabul in October 1879, during the Second Afghan War (1878-1880). Roberts was so taken with his discovery that he had two of his officers paint a new version (shown here) with the British and Afghan roles reversed, with a Trooper of the 9th (Queen's Royal) Lancers riding alongside a running Afghan soldier.