Colonel General of Hussars 1804

 I am sitting here looking at a large collection of military postcards which arrived today. There are around 80 sets of Rene North Paint Your Own Cards, unopened in their original envelopes,around ten unopened packets of Charles Stadden and others, along with some loose cards from the Imperial War Museum and other series.

If anyone has an FN 358, General Andoche Junot in his uniform as the Colonel General of Hussars, ready to paint this card may provide an additional reference to the Hinton Hunt painting instructions posted here.

I will add this image to that post as well. Blogger is messing up the format of this post - I apologise for this and will try to fix it later

Saxon Chevaulegers

These are eight David Clayton castings of SXN 41, one piece Saxon Chevaulegers charging. These came from Jack and in the absence of any Saxon infantry they will be brigaded with their cuirassier brethren within my Polish divisions.

Prints Militaire

Hinton Hunt issued a series of plates drawn by Gerry Embleton, together with painting instructions. I am not sure whether these were aimed more at their 54mm figure customers than their 20mm ones. Whatever the case, they were attractive and useful painting aids. Thanks to John and to Richard I have had access to a nearly complete set, and have posted them below, as part of my drive to preserve some of the Hinton Hunt ephemera.

The original description and lists of Prints Militaire from the big Hinton Hunt catalogue are reproduced below.

Prints Militaire NA1 Austro-Hungarian Infantry 1809-15

Prints Militaire NA2 Austro-Hungarian Infantry 1809-15

Prints Militaire NB1 British Infantry of the Line, 1812-15, officers and drummer

Prints Militaire NB2 British Infantry of the Line, 1812-15, NCOs and men

Prints Militaire NB4 Royal Horse Artillery, Britain, 1812/15

Prints Militaire NB5 The Black Watch, 42nd Regiment, 1812/15

Prints Militaire NF1 Infantry of the Line, France, 1808-12 (other ranks)

Prints Militaire NF2 French Imperial Guard, Polish Lancers of the Guard 1807-14

Prints Militaire NF3 Chassuers a Cheval de la Garde, France, 1800-15 officers,musicians etc

Prints Militaire NF4 Infantry of the Line, France, 1808-12 officers,musicians etc

Prints Militaire NP1 Prussian Infantry of the Line 1811-15 privates

Prints Militaire NP2 Prussian Infantry of the Line 1811-15 officers, NCO and drummer

Prints Militaire NR1 Russian Infantry of the Line 1812-15

Prints Militaire NR2 Russian Light Infantry 1812-15

Prints Militaire NR3 Russian Field Artillery of the Line 1812-15

British Stovepipe Infantry

Not a great picture, but I have finished all my early war British infantry with this two-and-a-half-battalion brigade.

Peninsular early war cavalry

A long time following the last post, here is my completed Peninsular early war cavalry division (minus artillery and command, yet to be assigned - the Heavies will be Ponsonby's, I'm undecided about the lights - probably it will have to be Stapleton Cotton.

The Heavies are missing plumes, which seems right for campaigning, and the Spanish Dragoons are I think a conversion of the Austrian Chevauleger with a bicorned head, which have then been cast up.

I have always wondered why the rule for British Napoleonic ranges has been for them almost always to be in Belgic shakoes for the infantry and foot gunners, bell topped shakoes for light dragoons, and helmets for heavy cavalry. This tends to mean even where earlier war figures were produced, they have far fewer poses or variations, and are far harder to come by.

Stovepipe infantry, tarletoned light dragoons and bicorned heavies are far more versatile, so I am glad to have been able to add these early cavalry. I have two and a half battalions of stovepipe infantry which are the next in line for painting - that will give me 6 battalions in stovepipe, plus a battalion of marines and a naval landing party, supported by four battalions of sepoys, for my early war expeditionary forces. they also have access to vast numbers of horse artillery plus

BN 213 British Light Dragoon in Tarleton

My first Napoleonics completed in a while, and the picture was not helped by needing to use the flash.

I am hopeful of eventually being able to field three regiments of these light dragoons and two of their heavy counterparts in bicornes. These will then provide the cavalry element for my early war British. I have a division's worth of line infantry in stovepipe shakos and at least a division's worth of light infantry and rifles. Just need to properly organise my French Line into pre Bardin and post Bardin divisions.

Don't use this at home...

Don't be tempted to try printing these off and see if any figures arrive...

Old Shop New Shop

From the oldest Hinton Hunt catalogue I have seen to date:

original contact details for the first shop
announcement of the new premises

Hinton Hunt Painting Instructions: and 1001 posts

Today I have mostly been adding around 60 sets of original Hinton Hunt painting instructions to the blog. The catalogue described these a "for the collector who likes to paint his own figures" and were typescript single sheets of paper. A recent joint purchase of a big Hinton Hunt collection included a large number of these - thanks to John C for scanning these. This is the kind of ephemera which can easily disappear so I am very happy to be able to make them generally available through the blog.

After a little thought I have decided the best thing to do was to add them to individual figure posts. There are now (I think) 139 posts including these instructions - some covered four or five different figures - eg all the foot artillery poses, or 1812 fusiliers.

Searching using the "painting instructions" label will show you which posts now include these. However, I also thought it might be useful to have a list of which figures are covered so I have produced one and attached it below. It goes without saying that if anyone has copies of any further sets of these which are not represented here, I would be very glad to receive them or scans of them for inclusion here.

Although the painting instructions date back to the 1960s Marcus Hinton was a thorough uniform researcher, not least because for his 54mm collectors figures. This is also apparent from his scrapbook. The painting noted for Napoleon, his marshals and generals are particularly interesting.

While going through this exercise I also realised I needed to add a post for FN 304, French Imperial Guard Red Lancer. What I failed to realise was that this made post 1000. So I have missed the millennium, but only just.

FN 304 French Imperial Guard Cavalry Red Lancer of the Guard

No picture of this figure is currently available

Coming soon...

I realise it is quite a time since the last post on this blog. This is partly because most of the figures in the Hinton Hunt ranges have now been posted, so this has become more a site of record than a developing one. However, a recent joint purchase of a long standing Hinton Hunt collections has provided access to more than 60  of the original painting instruction sheets. By far the largest group are for French figures - in particular the personality figures are well covered - but there are also significant numbers of Prussian, Austrian and Russian ones, and only two British

The next set of posts will therefore be of these painting instructions, as and when I receive scans of them. The preservation of some of this ephemeral information has always been one purpose of this blog so this is a very welcome development.

I will be giving some thought over how best to present these.

The next post will also be something of a landmark anyway, as it will be the 1000th post on the Hinton Hunter. Watch this space for those painting instructions.

Napoleonic Units: Hesse Darmstadt Regiment Gross und Erbprinz, second battalion

This second battalion of Gross und Erbprinz has taken an age to complete. This time I remembered to use the original Hinton Hunt painting instructions. I also used Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue to distinguish them from the first battalion (Vallejo Prussian Blue).The rank and file are Der Kriegspielers (thanks George) and command are vintage Hinton Hunts. I think I may do a mounted colonel using one of my vintage Garrison Wellington figures. The flag needs redoing now I have changed the ink cartridges in my printer.

The plan will be to brigade these together with the first battalion and the Badeners (who are still waiting for their officers). They may also find themselves operating together with the Bavarians - thanks to the generosity of Paul in Oz these now stretch to three small battalions.

Reinforcements

Thanks to Paul in Oz for a number of reinforcements - first, and most marvellously, 6BN 213 British Light Dragoons in tarleton helmets - top of my list of wanted figures - if anyone has any BN 206 Heavy Dragoons in cocked hat they want to send me that would be wonderful too! I know have 6 battalions of British infantry in stovepipe shakos so having some of the earlier British cavalry gives me an reasonably sized accurate British early war/Peninsular force.

Only marginally less marvellous are 16 marching Bavarians plus officer, which will bring my Bavarians up to full Regimental (brigade) strength. I know I had an idea of painting up a spare Prussian adc as a Bavarian general, I will have to have another look at Knotel to see if this is feasible.

Equally valuable are some Russian gunners and three very nice pairs of French artillery horses. All are very valuable items in bringing some of my national contingents up to strength and I am very grateful to Paul.

I have also added the picture to the previous post for BN 213.