The Victorian Age

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

Up to about 1820 his subjects had chiefly been dogs and horses, but he soon added other animals to his repertory. Among his father’s friends was the historical painter Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846), and on the advice of this artist Landseer, while still an Academy student, learnt to dissect and make anatomical studies of animals. Taking advantage of the death of a lion in one of the menageries, he diligently studied its anatomy, and the knowledge thus gained gave him a power in the drawing of that animal notable in his future works. The first fruits of these studies were his future works. The first fruits of these studies were his pictures ‘A Prowling Lion’ in the Academy of 1821 and ‘A Lion Disturbed’ in the following year. In 1824 he exhibited ‘The Cat’s Paw’, a picture of a monkey seizing a cat’s paw to take roasting chestnuts from a fire, this being one of the first of his animal paintings in which an obvious moral was happily combined with humor.

In this year, when Landseer was twenty two, he accompanied his friend and fellow-student C R Leslie (1794-1859) on a visit to Scotland, where the two young artists had the honor of staying with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. Landseer drew the dogs of the author of Waverley, and was introduced by the novelist to the deer forests of Scotland. Henceforward the ‘monarch of the glen’ became one of Landseer’s favorite subjects, and deer-stalking was the sport which he loved beyond all others; but it is said that the sportsman was often vanquished by the artist, and that when a particularly noble animal came in sight, Landseer was apt to fling down his rifle and pick up instead his sketch-book and pencil.

In 1826 he was elected A.R.A and his prosperity being now assured he left his father’s house and established himself at 1 St John’s Wood Road, where he lived unmarried till the day of his death. Landseer now widened the field of his art, and painted pictures of various subjects, among them being several portraits. One of the most successful of the last was ‘Lord Cosmo Russell,’ a picture of a little boy on a rough pony scampering over the heather; but while he never lacked patrons even for portraiture, his fame and popularity depended chiefly on his animal pictures, and particularly on his paintings of dogs. A witty canon of St Paul’s who was advised to have his portrait painted by Landseer, laughingly declined with the remark, ‘Is they servant a dog that he should do this thing?’

In 1834 he exhibited at the Royal Academy ‘Bolton Abbey in the Older Time,’ one of the best known and most popular of all his works, which has been made familiar throughout Great Britain not only by engravings but also by innumerable copies in needlework. In 1837 he increased his already great reputation by his pictures of a faithful dog watching beside a coffin, entitled ‘The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,’ a work of intense pathos, and in the following year he painted a noble Newfoundland dog as ‘A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society.’ No painter ever surpassed Landseer in rendering all the varied aspects of canine character, and while in some of his pictures he attained a sublimity of pathos so that some captions critics accused him of making his dogs ‘too human,’ in others he showed a subtle humor which is irresistible. Probably no English picture has ever enjoyed a wider popularity than ‘Dignity and Impudence’, in which Landseer amusingly contrasts an old bloodhound of the Duke of Grafton breed with a little Scotch terrier called ‘Scratch.’ Landseer loved dogs and kept a troop of them in his home at St John’s Wood.

From 1839 onwards the artist enjoyed a considerable intimacy with the Royal Family. He taught both Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort to etch and painted many pictures for them, one of his largest being ‘The Drive, Shooting Deer on the Pass.’ He had been elected R.A in 1831 and in 1850 he was knighted. He was a sculptor as well as a painter, and in 1859 he was commissioned to execute the lions for the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. On this work the artist was engaged, off and on, for some half a dozen years, and his lions were finally uncovered at Trafalgar Square in 1869. Two of the studies which Landseer made at the Zoo for these lions are now in the National Gallery.

Three years earlier, on the death of Sir Charles Eastlake (1793-1865), Landseer had been offered the Presidency of the Royal Academy, but he declined the honor, for though a general favorite, popular alike at Court, in society, and with the public, he was subject to fits of depression brought about by an almost morbid sensitiveness and a certain constitutional delicacy. Towards the end of his life he suffered continually from nerves, and his general state of health was sadly impaired by a railway accident in November 1868. This accident not only left a scar on his forehead but affected his memory, so that his last years were much clouded. He died in his house in St John’s Wood on October 1, 1873, and was buried in state at St Paul’s Cathedral.

The tradition of painting animals with affectionate insight, founded by Landseer, has been followed with success by many other British artists, prominent among them being Briton Rivière (1840-1920), who, after being influenced at first by the pictures of the Pre-Raphaelites and by Tennyson’s poetry, soon turned his attention to the painting of pictures in which animals played an important part. His well-known ‘Sympathy,’ in the Tate Gallery, is a characteristic Victorian picture in the Landseer tradition, but in gayer and more agreeable colors. It tells its own story clearly, and can never fail to appeal to all who love children and dogs and have noted the unspoken sympathy which exists between them.

The Victorian Age (continued)