The Duke of Wellington, born Arthur Wellesley in 1769, war-hero of Waterloo and adept politician was also well known as a ladies’ man. Cartoons from the period have him astride a cannon (as a lady says “Bless us! What a spanker”) or in all-too-intimate settings with political wives. Modern biographies have not been afraid to paint him as something of a serial adulterer who couldn’t walk past a pretty woman without getting up to no good. 

It is this perception that a new exhibition at Wellington’s London home, Apsley House, seeks to redress, by attempting to recast Wellington-the-womaniser as Wellington-the-man-who-was- friends-with-women. 

There are, of course, some grounds for this. Wellington married Catherine (Kitty) Pakenham a decade after he’d first met her — she had turned him down in 1792, and he had spent the intervening years in the army in India. On his return, Wellington proposed again without having seen her (“she has grown ugly, by Jove” he later wrote to his brother). The marriage was a disappointment for both. Wellington despaired over her lack of political interest, and sought comfort in the company, if not the arms, of other women. It is in this platonic light that curator Josephine Oxley seeks to portray his relationship with figures such as Harriet Arbuthnot — the wife of politician Charles Arbuthnot.

“Friendship” may well hold true for the Arbuthnots — Oxley makes much use of Harriet Arbuthnot’s journal to show a three-way friendship between Wellington and the couple —  but sex simmers under the surface of much of the evidence left of Wellington’s life. Lady Charlotte Greville — present here in a feathery portrait by John Hoppner — was told by her husband that her son was “not blind to [her] conduct with the Duke of Wellington”. How could such a comment refer to anything other than an affair? 

Even two of the exhibition’s portraits have a provenance in desire. Wellington fell in love with a wealthy American, Marianne Patterson, and commissioned Sir Thomas Lawrence to paint both her and himself, as a portrait pair. He kept her likeness, and she his. So far, so sweet — until Marianne married his eldest brother Richard Wellesley. The exhibition is the first time the portraits have been hung together since they left Lawrence’s studio: together at last, the sexual tension is present on the wall. 

Throughout, this show expends great energy on being studiously non-committal on the possibility, and fact, of the Duke’s philandering. We are shown Wellington the friend of the arts through his closeness with the opera singer Giuseppina Grassini; Wellington the proto-feminist in his delight in politically-minded women; and Wellington the friend of “young people” through his relationship with his niece Priscilla, Lady Burghersh. But details on his sexual intrigues are few. 

I’d suggest it is time we did away with such circumspection, and embraced the Iron Duke’s contradictions — perhaps more enthusiastically than Harriette Wilson did, a woman who, tellingly, barely features in this display. 

Until 30 October. wellingtoncollection.co.uk