Initially asked to paint various royal pets, he then moved on to portraits of ghillies and gamekeepers. Queen Victoria commissioned numerous pictures from the artist. His appeal crossed class boundaries: reproductions of his works were common in middle-class homes, while he was also popular with the aristocracy. One is barking to attract attention while the other, who is depicted with the miniature barrel, attempts to revive the man by licking his hand. Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveller (1820) shows two of the dogs standing over a man who is partially buried in snow. Bernard rescue dogs in the Alps carry a small casket of brandy on their collars. One of his earliest paintings is credited as the origin of the myth that St. In the last few years of his life Landseer's mental stability was problematic, and at the request of his family he was declared insane in July 1872.Īlpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveller (1820) In his late thirties Landseer suffered what is now believed to be a substantial nervous breakdown, and for the rest of his life was troubled by recurring bouts of melancholy, hypochondria, and depression, often aggravated by alcohol and drug use. He was knighted in 1850, and although elected to be president of the Royal Academy in 1866 he declined the invitation. Despite her being twenty years older than he was, they began an affair. In 1823 Landseer was commissioned to paint a portrait of Georgiana Russell, Duchess of Bedford. He was an acquaintance of Charles Robert Leslie, who described him as "a curly-headed youngster, dividing his time between Polito's wild beasts at Exeter Chanqe and the Royal Academy Schools." They also visited Scotland together in 1824, which had a great effect upon Landseer. He was elected an Associate at the minimum age of 24, and an Academician five years later in 1831. At the age of just 13, in 1815, he exhibited works there as an “Honorary Exhibitor”. Landseer's life was entwined with the Royal Academy. He studied under several artists, including his father, and the history painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who encouraged the young Landseer to perform dissections in order to fully understand animal musculature and skeletal structure. He was something of a prodigy whose artistic talents were recognised early on. Robin Hamlyn, Robert Vernon's Gift - British Art for the Nation 1847, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p.69.ĭoes this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.Landseer was born in London, the son of the engraver John Landseer A.R.A. Two of these were destroyed in the flood of 1928, but the other six, including High Life, are still in the Tate collection (Tate A00702, N00409, N00411, N00412 and N00415).įurther reading: Richard Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1982, p.99, no.59, reproduced p.101, in colour. Vernon owned several works by Landseer, eight of which he bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1847. The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1831 and was later acquired, along with Low Life, by Robert Vernon, who had an important collection of 19 th Century British art. This dog represents the chivalrous, the rural and the patrician, as opposed to the feisty terrier, which represents the tough, urban values of the plebeian English workman. The dog itself was once thought to have been Scott's dog Maida, but in pose and colouring the dog is closer to Landseer's own deerhound, which appears with Maida in A Scene at Abbotsford c.1827 (Tate N01532). Through the window can be glimpsed a castellated tower. Various props scattered on the table and floor give the impression that the dog's master is a knight: hawking gloves, two rapiers, a sixteenth century-style helmet and breastplate, a standing cup, old leather-bound books, a partially unrolled document, a quill pen, a candlestick made from an eagle's talon and a bellpull. The deerhound in this picture reflects an aristocratic world of chivalry the interior is like a scene from a Walter Scott novel. Here the contrast is more one of character than of morality. There is a long literary and pictorial tradition behind such contrasts as virtue and vice, good and evil, which usually have some kind of moral purpose. The intention is to juxtapose two dogs from different worlds and different social classes as representations of their absent owners. This particular work was conceived as a pair with Low Life (Tate A00702), and depicting a battle-scarred terrier, guarding his master's shop. About half consist of commissioned, life-size ' portraits', the rest are independent subjects, smaller in scale and usually with a narrative content. Landseer's dog paintings of the 1830s are among his most popular works.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |