Hesse Seewald Army - Work In Progress

The Erprinz Friedrich of Hesse Seewald welcomes you to his review of the troops. (click all pix to enlarge)

The long three day Labor Day weekend has given me the opportunity to paint some more units for my growing Hesse Seewald Army, so I thought that I would post a few pictures to bring everyone up to date. Even though the HS Army is Germanic in location and character, I have based its uniform colors on those of the Russian army circa 1805. The basic infantry uniform is a green coat with differing facings colors for each regiment. Small clothes are either white waistcoat and breeches or straw colored. The artillery arm is clothed in red, circa the Russian army of the SYW. The cut of the cloth is Minden Prussian, by nature.

Why Green? I want them to look sort of Russian, but also sort of Prussian. I like the uniform distinctions of the 1805 Russian infantry and I figured that if I followed Russian SYW-early Napoleonic color schemes, that the HS could do double duty as a Russian army of the SYW

The army currently has three battalions completed and I added a pair of 3-pound battalion guns and a field battery of 6-pounders painted in the artillery livery of red coats and waistcoats, black facings and white breeches.

Field battery using Minden Prussian crew and Pioneers as the laborers.

Another view of the battery: note the Front Rank ammo wagon and the Minden civilian vignette carrying a wooden case, filling in as ammo runners to the battery.

The Charlottenburg Musketeer Regiment 

The Grenadier Company of the Holstein Musketeer Regiment

Overhead view of some of the army. Here you can see one of the 3-pound battalion guns in front of the Charlottenburg Regiment. At the far left, you can see one company of the Von Glasenap Musketeer Regiment (Green coat with red facings) and the Leibgarde Regiment in red coats. King Georg Ludwig II is seen on his horse, waving his hat.

King Georg Ludwig II (left) and the Erbprinz Friedrich (right)

More later, I am on a painting roll of late.

The Artist Steve Hezzlewood

"The 44th Regiment of Foot, Niagara 1758" watercolor by Steve Hezzlewood.

Over on the forum, "A Military Gentleman" or AMG, today the topic of Steve Hezzlewood's biography came up in conversation and in the course of doing a Google search on the fellow, I stumbled across this really nice water color that he painted many years ago. I knew that Steve was an excellent sculptor (in fact his RSM or Pax Britannia figures are responsible for getting me into wargaming in the first place), but I had no idea that he was an artist as well. I suppose that the two talents naturally go together.

The painting depicts the British 44th Regiment of Foot in North America. I found a copy of the picture on line, but it was listed as being in "Nigeria", which I believe to be a typo. The setting is supposed to be "Niagara", of course.

For some reason, the figures in the water color remind me so much of Steve's RSM wargame miniatures. Actually, the answer is quite simple: Steve was an artist by training and he used transferred his ability to draw and paint realistic people into the putty medium to create realistic looking wargame figures.

RSM Prussian Cuirassiers sculpted by Steve Hezzlewood.

By the way, if you have bought a copy of John Ray's book, "A Military Gentlemen in the 18th Century", then you really owe it to yourself to zip over to John's web site and join the forum.

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