Landseer

Full Name: Sir Edwin Henry Landseer

Achievements: Famous British animal painter.

Born: 7^th March 1802, Marylebone, in London, England.

Died:  1^st October 1873, in London, England.  Aged 71.

Field & Discipline: Art; Painter; Sculptor

Language: English

Father: John Landseer

Mother: Jane Potts (m. 1793)

Siblings: 13 siblings (6 surviving): Thomas; Charles; Jane; Anna Maria; Jessica ( a landscape and miniature painter); Emma

Spouse: None

Children: None

Education: No formal education until artistic training from painter Benjamin Haydon (1815-16); Royal Academy Schools (1816-20)

Major Work:

“Monarch of the Glen” (1851)

Life & Times:

In 1813 Landseer won the silver palette of the Society of Arts for two horse drawings.  This success was followed  two years later by his debut at the Royal Academy, where he exhibited an etching of a “Pointer Bitch and Puppy” and “ A Mule.”

In 1815 he received his first artistic instruction outside the family home, from the artist Benjamin Robert Haydon, who trained him in anatomy and made him study Raphael's cartoons and the Elgin Marbles. 

In 1816 he entered the Royal Academy Schools,  where he came under the influence of the Swiss painter [taught by] Fuseli*, who instructed him in figure drawing.

Landseer's first major public success came in 1818 when the Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolours exhibited his “Fighting Dogs Getting Wind,” which was highly praised in the press and bought by the leading art connoisseur of the day, Sir George Beaumont.

Landseer next produced  “Alpine Mastiffs Re-animating a Distressed Traveller” in 1819.  A brilliant future now seemed certain, as the critics and the public loved his work. In 1820 he was given the opportunity to dissect a dead lion and, in 1821, two large pictures of lions,  “A Lion Enjoying his Repast” and “A Lion Disturbed at his Repast,” were exhibited at the British Institution.  In 1822, “A Prowling Lion” followed. 

These successes were followed by “The Rat Catchers” and “The Cat's Paw,” exhibited at the British Institution in 1824.

In the early 1820s, Landseer had started a more social life.  He was frequently at the Countess of Blessington's Kensington salon with the “ultra dandy” Count D'Orsay, and gradually, through commissions and mutual friends, he became known to some of the wealthiest British families, in particular the Duke and Duchess of Bedford. 

He visited their home at Woburn Abbey frequently in order to paint most of the Russell family and it was on one such occasion that he met the woman who was to be the passion of his life, Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford, the sixth Duke's second wife.  She was a spirited amateur actress whom Landseer first painted in 1823,  and their friendship lasted from the early 1820s until her death in Nice in 1853.

In 1824 he made his first trip to Scotland, in the company of C.R. Leslie, to visit [painted] Sir Walter Scott* at Abbotsford.  Unfortunately they had not written to Scott of their proposed visit and he was away for a few days when they called, so they set off for a tour of the Highlands. 

The tour was a revelation to Landseer, the scenery making a deep and lasting impression on him.  He also took to the sports and pastimes of the gentry: trout and salmon fishing, deer-stalking and grouse-shooting.  The trip inspired “The Hunting of Chevy Chase,” first shown at the Royal Academy in 1826.

On his way back from the Highlands, Landseer revisited Scott and stayed with the writer for a week, drawing him and his famous deerhound “Maida.”

In 1826 Landseer was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and in the next few years he was increasingly in demand as a great wit and raconteur.  He became a member of the group known as “The Portwiners,” which would gather at the home of the illustrator George Cattermole.    The group included [a pal of] Dickens*, [a pal of] Thackeray*.  Meanwhile, Landseer was exhibiting successfully and selling a great many paintings to four wealthy patrons who made the young painter rich.

In 1831 another trip to Abbotsford produced a portrait of Scott, now in the National Gallery in London.  Landseer also began illustrations for the Abbotsford edition of Scott's Waverley novels (1831-41). 

In the same year he was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy.  During the 1830s Landseer turned increasingly to wood engraving and then, from the late 1830s, the new process of steel engraving, or etching, which was revolutionizing popular art and allowing artists to replicate their own art for sale.

In 1839 one of his most important commissions was for a portrait of [painted] Queen Victoria*, which she gave to Prince Albert before their marriage.  This began a long artistic association and friendship between the royal family and Landseer:  From 1839 to 1866 he frequently drew or painted the Queen, Albert and their children, as well as the Queen's gamekeepers and pets.  He also taught Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to etch and between 1841 and 1844, Victoria produced six and the Albert four etchings from his drawings.

In 1843 he painted frescoes for the Queen's summer-house at Buckingham Palace, at the same time continued to exhibit his animal paintings.  From  1840, however, Landseer was not always in perfect health.  In that year, he left England for a few months in order to recover from nervous anxiety and paranoia. 

In 1850 he accepted a knighthood and in 1851, he exhibited both the famous “Monarch of the Glen” and “A Midsummer Night's Dream,”  the latter commissioned by [commissioned by] Isambard Kingdom Brunel* for his “Shakespeare Room.”

In 1855 he won the gold medal of the Paris Universal Exhibition.  He had started to drink a great deal and, from 1858, increasingly suffered from depression, hallucinations and fits of paranoia.

During the early 1860s, Landseer continued to fight his illness and managed to complete another important commission (and his last great achievement) to sculpt the four lions at the base of Nelson's Column (Nelson himself a sculpture by [worked with] Sir Edward Baily*)  in Trafalgar Square,  London.

Landseer had received the commission from Lord Derby, then Prime Minister, in 1859.  The task was a huge one and Landseer did all the modelling himself by hand.  London Zoo provided him with a lion which fell ill and died when the artist was out of town, so he had to work for as long as he could with plaster casts of  the carcass.

The first lion was placed on its pedestal on 25^th January 1867 and the whole quartet was unveiled by the end of that month.  Each lion was 20 feet long and 11 feet high and weighed 7 tons.

For the last years of his life Landseer was effectively insane and for long periods he remained in his studio, cared for by his brother and a nurse.  He died there on 1^st October 1873.

Extra Connections: He went shooting with [shot with]  Millais*

Assessment: His paintings of animals were at first very realistic, but later in his career, he allowed sentimentalism to affect his style.

Oneliner: Edwin Landseer, Victorian animal painter

Bibliography:

• Hill, Ian Barras, Landseer: An Illustrated Life of Sir Edwin Landseer, 1802-1873, Aylesbury: Shire Publications Ltd., 1973.