Military weapons, armour and uniforms have long been status symbols and were used in formal portraits as symbols to help identify the place of the sitter in society. Many mythological and biblical stories include weapons in one form or another, though they are seldom historically accurate. Painters had stocks of studio props to use.

From about the period of the Napoleonic wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, artists began to see one of their roles as accurately recording current events.