Landseer's Dogs and Their Stories

Landseer’s Dogs and their Stories
Landseer’s Dogs and their Stories
by Sarah Tytler Author of “Childhood a hundred years Ago.” Chronographs of Paintings BY Sir Edwin Landseer. Marcus Ward & Co. London & Belfast.
Landseer’s Dogs AND THEIR STORIES
BY SARAH TYTLER Author of “Papers for Thoughtful Girls,” “Childhood a Hundred Years Ago,” &c., &c. With Six Chromographs AFTER PAINTINGS BY SIR EDWIN LANDSEER London: MARCUS WARD & CO., 67 & 68, CHANDOS STREET, STRAND And ROYAL ULSTER WORKS, BELFAST 1877

LANDSEER’S DOGS AND THEIR STORIES.
A PORTION of Sir Edwin Landseer’s strength and of his weakness lay in the human element which he introduced into his pictures of animals. Each of his pictures tells a story—not only of animal characteristics, but of those characteristics as they approach most closely to men’s qualities, and as they are blended most inseparably with men’s lives.
The dog is the humble friend of man, and man has been called the god of the dog; a sorry god at the best—often a perverse and cruel divinity. In very many of Landseer’s pictures it is impossible to dissolve the relationship. You cannot look at the animal without thinking of the absent master and mistress. The hero or the heroine of the scene is strongly influenced by the man or the woman in the background. It is a little drama of blended human and animal life, as well as the spirited and faithful likeness of an animal which you gaze upon.
A good deal of what is unique in Landseer belongs to this peculiarity, and much of his great popularity is due to it. Men are charmed not only by contemplating the representations of their four-footed favourites, but by having a genius to interpret to them the beautiful and gracious ties which bind together God’s higher and humbler creatures. After all, God put man at the head of His creatures in this world, and perhaps man is not so far wrong as he has sometimes been said to show himself, in seeing in the lower animals a reflection of his own hopes, aims, and destiny.