Lasalle & Drumming Up a Special Figure

A while ago I posted a WiP piece, the French 4th Hussars, and a personality figure of Lasalle.  As I find painting one-off figures much more enjoyable it's no surprise that Lasalle is the first to be finished.  I present: General Antoine-Charles-Louis, Comte de Lasalle.

The figure is a Hinton Hunt (HH) casting except I added a pipe in his right hand, as he is so often depicted with one.  I painted his uniform, horse colour, tack and shapbraque based on an illustration by Patrice Courcelle (I think) showing him leading a charge by chasseurs á cheval.  

I'm guessing the picture is meant to depict him at the Battle of Medina de Rioseco (14 July, 1808), and as my collection is primarily Peninsular War focused that seemed most appropriate.  Anyway, that's why he's not on a tiger skin as in the famous painting of him by Detaille.

Give us a twirl Antoine ...

... and then a curtain call in close-up.

In the meantime, while Lasalle has been hogging the painting table, and now the limelight, the lack of progress on the 4th hussars is getting embarrassing - see below.

But, Lasalle doesn't deserve all the blame for the sluggish painting on the hussars, as I've had a fairly ambitious conversion job running in the background.  

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For some time now, I've been rather taken by this Knötel image of a Prussian drummer mounted on a coach horse during the Prussian pursuit of the French army after Waterloo.

The story goes that the sound of the drum convinced the fleeing French that Prussian infantry, as well as cavalry, were on their heels and thus they'd keep running.  Whatever the reality, I wanted to make this figure, and here he is.

He is an amalgam of an artillery draught horse (unridden), a pair of hussar legs and, from the waist up a Prussian drummer courtesy of 'Wellington Man' from 'The Hinton Spieler' blog.  I had all but given up on this conversion after working on the separate bits, but while cleaning up Lasalle and the hussars I put the bits together and realised it looked much better when assembled.  This was enough to revitalise the project, and it, together with Lasalle, then claimed most of my recent painting / modelling time.

So first, as I'm rather proud of him, a couple more photos ...

... and yet more.

This was a pretty ambitious conversion as removing the drummer's legs while keeping his coattails attached was a long drawn out and fiddly job.  Other challenges included: rebuilding some of the detail on the drum (it had to be repositioned for a riding figure); adding straps on which the drummer is resting his feet for balance; and, building a more animated horse tail out of solder.  The following montage shows some of these points in close-up.

Now he's off to find a Prussian army that needs him to help them whip the French and chase them all the way back to Paris.