Sir Edwin Henry Landseer Biography

Dromo's Den

LANDSEER, Sir Edwin Henry (1802-73). An eminent English animal painter. He was born in London, March 7, 1802. Under his father's guidance he sketched animals in the fields about London before his fifth year, and before he was 12 he could etch and paint in water colors and oil. Some of these earliest efforts are preserved in South Kensington Museum. He won the silver palette and three medals of the Society of Arts (1813-16) and made his début at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1815. Although he seems to have profited from the advice of Haydon in 1815, he was not among the latter's pupils, and in 1816 he entered the Academy schools. During the following years his paintings attracted much attention, especially the "Fighting Dogs" (1819) and "Alpine Mastiffs Reviving a Traveler in the Snow" (1820). The latter work, engraved by his father and brother, became one of the most popular prints of the day.

In 1825 he went to Scotland, visiting Sir Walter ScottSir Walter Scott, whom he painted with his dogs at Abbotsford, and traveling in the Highlands. This visit was of decisive influence upon his art. A great lover of sport, he learned to know the deer in their native haunts and was the first to introduce them into art. His imagination was also affected by the grandeur of mountain scenery, which he used as background for many of his pictures. From this time, too; he began to paint animals, especially the dog, in their relation to man, endowing them with human sentiments. This quality is the chief source of his popularity with the public, but it also distinguishes him unfavorably from really great animal painters like Potter, Snyders, and Troyon, who painted animals as they really are in nature. He also increased the popularity of his pictures by carefully chosen names. Among his most celebrated paintings are "High Life and Low Life" (1831) , Tate Gallery, a deerhound and a butcher's mongrel; " A Jack in Office" (1833) , South Kensington Museum; "Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time" (1834); "Chatsworth," a picture showing dexterous treatment of dead game; "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner," South Kensington Museum; "A Distinguished Member of the Humane Soeiety" (1838), Tate Gallery; "Dignity and Impudence" (1839), National Gallery; "A Random Shot" (1848); "Monarch of the Glen" (1851).

Landseer became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1826, at 24 years of age, the earliest allowed by the statutes, and a member in 1831. He frequently drew and painted the Queen and the Prince Consort, both of whom he taught etching. He was of a nervous temperament, and his peculiar sensitiveness to imagined slights filled the latter part of his life with mental depression. In 1850 he was knighted: in 1855 he received gold medals at the Paris Exposition and at Vienna in 1873. In 1865 he declined the presidency of the Academy. He died Oct. 1, 1873, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Although not of the same high quality as his animal paintings, Landseer's portraits were frank and natural; among the best are those of himself and of his father. In the "Connoisseurs" he represented himself as sketching, with a dog on each side watching his progress. He also designed for engravings, his best designs being his illustrations to the Waverley Novels. As a sculptor, he designed the fine lions at the base of Nelson's Monument in Trafalgar Square, besides a "Stag at Bay," exhibited the year of his death. In painting he was a facile draftsman, swift in execution and elegant in line; his color, however, especially in his last works, is liable to be cold and crude. The chief interest of his canvases consists in their illustrative value, and they are best known through the large number of excellent engravings made of them, especially by his brother Thomas.

His paintings can he studied only in. England. The National Gallery contains, besides the important works mentioned above, "King Charles Spaniels" and "Sleeping Bloodhound." In South Kensington Museum there are: "Highland Drovers' Departure"; "Dog and Shadow"; "A Fireside Party"; "There is No Place Like Home"; "The Twa Dogs"; "Tethered Rams"; "Suspense"; "Eagle's Nest." The Tate Gallery possesses: "Highland Music" (1830); "Hunted Stag" (1838); "Peacock" (1846); "War" (1846); "Highland Dogs"; "Alexander and Diogenes." The National Portrait Gallery contains his portrait of Sir Walter Scott. There are also fine examples at Windsor and in other royal palaces. Among well-known works in private possession are: "Cat's Paw" (1824); "Poacher Deer Stalking"; "Otter Speared" (1844); "Swannery Invaded by Eagles"; "Stag at Bay."

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 527-528.