Lady Florentia Sale, 1842 (colour litho)

Lady Florentia Sale, 1842. Coloured lithograph after Lieutenant Vincent Eyre, Bengal Artillery, 1842 (c). Lady Florentia Sale (1790-1853), was the wife of Major-General Sir Robert Henry Sale, the defender of Jalalabad during the 1st Afghan War (1839-42). Lady Sale accompanied the 116 miles retreat of the British from Kabul back to Jalalabad in 1842. After witnessing much bloodshed and nursing the wounded, she was eventually captured and imprisoned. She was finally released in September 1842 by Major-General Sir George Pollock’s force. Lady Sale kept a diary during the retreat and her subsequent nine months of captivity, which was published to critical acclaim in 1843. Dubbed the 'soldier's wife par excellence' by ‘The Times’, Lady Sale was also known as 'the Grenadier in Petticoats' by her husband's fellow officers. From ‘Portraits of the Kabul Prisoners’, a set of pre-publication coloured lithographs later published by John Murray in 1843. The artist’s original drawings were made during his captivity in Afghanistan after the Retreat from Kabul during the 1st Afghan War (1838-1842).