Sir Edwin Landseer
Born – London, England 1802
Died – London, England 1873
Sir Edwin Landseer was an infant prodigy who first exhibited at the Royal Academy at the age of 12. He enjoyed a successful career based upon paintings that lent their animal subjects a range of human expressions and virtues. His brother Thomas was an engraver whose many prints of Landseer’s work helped to increase their popularity. Queen Victoria’s favourite painter, he was knighted in 1850. Monarch of the Glen is Landseer’s best known painting. It is a large work, which not only shows great skill in its rendition of a stag, but which embodied certain human virtues considered important in the Victorian age. The stag is the personification of nobility and heroism. The Scottish highland setting, already popularized by the novels of Sir Walter Scott, was given added status through Queen Victoria’s residence there. Landseer’s work lost some of its appeal in the twentieth century. Apart from accusations of sentimentality, the paintings have been attacked on the grounds that they frequently depict and often glorify the bloodsport of deer-hunting. Landseer also worked on several sculptures, including the lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square.
Masterpieces:
- The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner
- Dignity and Impudence
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.