Louis William Desanges
British painter (1822-1906)
Louis William Desanges (1822 – 2 October 1905) was an English artist of French descent known for his paintings of Victoria Cross winners.
Life
Born in Bexley, Kent, he was the great grandson of a French nobleman who had settled in England 80 years before and, as a consequence, the artist used the title 'Chevalier'. He travelled in France and Italy before settling in London in 1845; he later travelled to India. At first his pictures were of an historical nature, but he turned more to portrait painting as it was more lucrative.
While painting a portrait of Lieut. Col. Robert Lindsay (created Baron Wantage in 1885) who had won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of the Alma at his home in Wantage, the two men came up with idea of creating a series of paintings containing portraits of the various soldiers winning their V.C. medals. Many of these were exhibited at the Egyptian Gallery in Piccadilly, and 47 of the paintings were exhibited at the Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1862. In 1900, the majority of them were acquired by Lord Wantage and hung in the Victoria Cross Gallery. In all, fifty oil paintings were painted by the artist between 1859 and 1862.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6688384. VIAF identifies the subject as 61074075. The Library of Congress control number is nb2007027798. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1822, 1905, 1845 and 1885.
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This entry incorporates text from “Louis William Desanges” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.