[CRIMEAN WAR] Watercolour view of Sebastopol from the heights, 1854-55.

Watercolour on paper, 315 x 200 mm; unsigned; verso inscribed in pencil in contemporary hand ‘Crimea’; tiny loss at lower left corner, otherwise well preserved; archival matted.

This watercolour is probably the work of a war correspondent attached to the British troops outside Sebastopol in 1854-55.

The Siege of Sevastopol (which was at the time called Sebastopol in English), from September 1854 – September 1855, is one of the most famous military actions of the Crimean War, and was arguably the most strategically important. The siege was the final stage in the march of the allies (French, Ottoman and British) from Eupatoria to Sevastopol, and saw the allied troops undertaking six bombardments of the capital, on 17 October 1854; and on 9 April, 6 June, 17 June, 17 August, and 5 September 1855. The city of Sevastopol was the base of the Tsar’s Black Sea Fleet, which posed a major threat to the Mediterranean. This siege proved the culminating battle for the strategic Russian port in 1854-55, and was the concluding episode in the Crimean War.