No painter who ever lived is so universally known as Landseer, and this is because his father and brothers made it their life-business to reproduce his work by engraving.
Occasionally, rich ladies would want their own portraits painted with a favorite dog at their feet, or men wanted themselves portrayed on horseback, and so Landseer found himself with more orders than he could well care for. People put their names, or the name of their dog, on his waiting-list, and some of the dogs died of old age before the name was reached.
"I hear," said a lady to Sydney Smith at a dinner party—"I hear you are to have your portrait painted by Landseer."
"Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" answered the wit. The story went the rounds, and Mulready once congratulated the clergyman on the repartee.
"I never made the reply," said Sydney Smith; "but I wish I had."
Sydney Smith was once visiting the Landseer studio, and his eye chanced to light on the picture of a very peculiar-looking dog.
"Yes, it's a queer picture of a queer dog. The drawing is bad enough, and never pleased me!" And Landseer picked up the picture and gave it a toss out of the window. "You may have it if you care to go get it," he carelessly remarked to the visitor. Smith made haste to run downstairs and out of the house to secure his prize. He found it lodged in the branches of a tree.
In telling the tale years afterward, Smith remarked that, whereas many men had climbed trees to evade dogs, yet he alone of all men had once climbed a tree to secure one.
Sir Walter Scott saw Landseer's picture of "The Cat's Paw," and was so charmed with it that he hunted out the young artist, and soon after invited him to Abbotsford.
Leslie, the American artist, was at that time at Scott's home painting the novelist's portrait. This portrait, by the way, became the property of the Ticknor family of Boston, and was exhibited a few years ago at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.