Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch

The Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch, originally entitled Chelsea Pensioners Receiving the London Gazette Extraordinary of Thursday, June 22, 1815, Announcing the Battle of Waterloo, is an oil painting by David Wilkie, commissioned by Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in August 1816.

It shows old soldiers gathered around a wooden table outside the "Duke of York" public house, in Jew's Row off the King's Road in Chelsea.

The painting's focus on ordinary people made a significant impression on Théodore Géricault when he viewed the unfinished work in Wilkie's studio in the spring of 1821, and on its second showing at the Royal Institution.

The painting was given a prominent, central position at the Royal Academy summer exhibition at Somerset House in 1822, hanging over the fireplace beside a portrait of the Duke of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

It became so popular that a rail was installed to protect it from the crowds, the first time that this precaution had been needed at a Royal Academy exhibition (the next occasion was for William Powell Frith's The Derby Day in 1858).

David Wilkie 's painting The Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch , 158 × 97 centimetres (62 × 38 in).
The characters in the painting.
An oil sketch version at the Yale Center for British Art .