This watercolour sketch is pasted in on page 49 of a leather-bound folio album containing 62 sketches and watercolours and 33 early photographs, many signed by or attributable to Thomas Wingate (1807-69), former British army officer and second husband of Eleanor Terry nee Rouse (1813-1898).
The sketch depicts two officers of the 2nd, or Queen's Royal Regiment of Foot during the time that the regiment was in cantonment at Belgaum, India in the late 1830s. Wingate was himself a Lieutenant in the 2nd Foot at the time he made the sketch and his caption beneath the image has been written at a later date. Major Raitt was George Dalhousie Jolliffe Raitt, born in Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, England, in September 1807, eldest son of Lieut-Colonel George Edward Raitt of the 2nd, or Queen's Royal, Regiment of Foot, and his wife Frances Jane Jolliffe. He followed his father into the 2nd Foot: commissioned an ensign in 1835, captain in 1831, brevet major in 1839 (after being wounded in the siege of Ghuznee (Ghazni) during the First Anglo-Afghan War), and major in 1841. He died from sunstroke at Mount Abu, Rajasthan, India, in 1843. Captain Keith was Henry Duncan Keith, born Scotland c1797. He joined the British army as an ensign in in the 69th Foot in April 1814 and served in that capacity at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in the 89th Foot in December 1820, lieutenant in the 2nd in 1825 and captain on 29 June 1837. He died at Bombay in March 1839.
A related image by Wingate is held in Brown University Library (Providence, Rhode Island): https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:243888/ [MM, June 2017]
