The Collection of Medals to Musicians formed by the Late Llewellyn Lord

Army L.S. & G.C., V.R., 2nd issue, large letter reverse (Robert Smart, Serjeant 13th Regiment Foot. 1847) fitted with steel clip and rectangular steel bar suspension, with top silver brooch bar, nearly extremely fine £600-700

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals to Musicians formed by the Late Llewellyn Lord.

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Provenance: Alan Wolfe Collection, 2005.

Robert Smart was born on 10 March 1805 in Barony, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, and attested for the 13th Light Infantry on 30 January 1826. Although the regiment was then fighting in Burma, he did not join it in the East Indies until 1828. He had been promoted Corporal in July 1826, a very rapid rise after only six months as Private, followed by promotion to Sergeant in May 1829. He returned to England early in 1833 and served the remainder of his career at the regimental depot.

In the summer of that year he sat for the French artist, Alexandre-Jean Dubois Drahonet, who had been commissioned by King William IV to paint the ‘New Costumes of the British Army’. In 1847 Smart was given a medical discharge from the Army while stationed at Dublin. On 27 March 1848, he received his Army Long Service and Good Conduct Medal from the Staff Officer of Pensions at Taunton, where he lived until his sudden death from a brain tumour in 1860. It transpired that he had had a seizure while burying his head in the water butt in his yard, a regular practise by which he attempted to relieve the violent headaches from which he suffered.