The defence of Rorke's Drift was a costly and popular acquisition by Gallery trustees as they built up a state art collection in the 1880s. It proved a great success, fulfilling all their aims to educate, uplift and entertain. Scanned by crowds of visitors looking for incidents and personalities of a battle already passing into legend, The defence of Rorke's Drift was the Black Hawk Down! of its day. The historical importance of what became a companion piece to Vive l'Empereur!  made it the logical candidate for a large conservation project.

The painting was done in 1880 by Alphonse de Neuville, a colleague of Edouard Detaille and a military painter with a much-praised ability, as the London Times put it, to capture the 'grim, uncompromising force' of modern war. His interpretation of a desperate defence of a store and hospital in southern Africa by British soldiers the year before was typical of his work, choreographing the details of a struggle by a few isolated men who'd resigned themselves to defeat and likely death yet fought on, winning a moral victory and, in this case, a military one too.

The painting was shown in London and then toured England. Perhaps fifty thousand people paid to see it. It seemed a coup for New South Wales when the Gallery trustees bought it in 1881. A Victorian newspaper recorded the envy south of the Murray that 'our friends across the river got hold of' a work by 'so eminent a master'.

The fight at Rorke's Drift was already working its way into Australian culture, as in England becoming a metaphor for courage in the face of great odds, reinforcing a military heritage built largely by the British army, and shaping a popular view of what war was like. De Neuville's painting reinforced all this, and kept doing so until Australians went to war in large numbers. It took pride of place in a souvenir album of reproductions of some of Gallery's artworks sold three months after the landing at Gallipoli in 1915 to raise funds for wounded soldiers.

Once Australians began building their own military tradition, and once Australian artists and their patrons embraced modernism, The defence of Rorke's Drift began to seem antique. But it remained popular with the public and rarely left the Gallery's walls. It can now be appreciated for its drama as well as for being a milestone in the history of the Gallery, the history of popular taste, and the history of the Australian understanding of war. To better preserve this important work, Conservation is restoring the painting and its massive frame. See the progress reports for details.

For more about the painting see the text of a talk given in the Gallery in July 2005.