Sir Edwin Landseer

by Frederic George Stephens

Landseer’s precocity exceeded that of Lucas van Leyden, one of the great artists whose early skill has made them wonderful, and added interest to their after-glory. Lucas van Leyden etched designs of his own when he was but nine years of age. When he was fourteen appeared his famous print of Mahomet killing Sergius the Monk. When Van Leyden was twelve he painted “St. Hubert,” thereby beating Edwin Landseer in pictorial progress, if not in precocity of draughtsmanship. To have been so nearly neck-and-neck in early development with such a magnificent genius as that of Lucas van Leyden, and to have maintained that remarkable position through a long life, was a singular fortune. Van Leyden, however, died at thirty-nine years of age. Sir Edwin’s years attained to nearly double that period.

At the sale of Mr. M. W. Simpson’s pictures, in 1848 (Mr. Simpson was an early friend and patron of Landseer’s), a considerable number of the artist’s youthful productions were disposed of, many of which were, we believe, painted at about this period of his career. Of those probably executed a little later, but which for convenience sake we may as well refer to here, if it were but to declare how these pictures have risen in value, the following were examples:—“A Scotch Terrier with a Rat in his mouth,” sold for, although not more than four inches by five inches, sixty-eight guineas, and would now, twenty-five years later, produce treble that sum. This work has been engraved, we believe, by Mr. T. Landseer. “Waiting for Orders,” a full length portrait of Mr. Simpson’s coachman, sold for thirty-two guineas. This was not that portrait of a deer-hound which is now called “Waiting,” and was engraved by J. C. Webb. “The Paddock,” an old chestnut horse, and a white Scotch terrier near it, with a distant view of Windsor Castle, sold for one hundred guineas. If this could happen twenty-five years ago, with regard to unexhibited pictures of comparatively small account, what could be expected now, although the artist was most prolific, and not, like Mulready, accustomed to confine his labours to a few canvases or panels? For this question of the comparative prices of old and later pictures by Landseer we shall enable the reader to form an answer for himself ere our task is complete.

Among the minor works of the painter, none have so much interest as examples of the etchings which were produced when he was little more than an infant. The inherent ability of the man’s mind is more distinctly and decidedly marked in these comparatively unimportant works than in those which received the benefit of years of study and of craft, and were produced when his natural powers had been consummated by practice upon a score of pictures, being the fruits of an intelligence developed to the utmost in that way which these very etchings, more than any other means, declare to be proper, apt and natural to it. Edwin Landseer continued the practice of etching, and made the results of these labours proportionately as valuable and meritorious as his pictures. It is not, however, to the products of his perfected skill that we now address our remarks, so much as to the works of his infancy, boyhood, and youth. As some of these juvenile productions are very rare, and consequently little studied, although much admired in artistic circles, our readers will not be sorry to have an account of a collection of them, including works duly annotated with the age, of the artist at the time they were executed.[16]

The first etching on our list is said to be also that which was produced before all others by “Master E. Landseer,” and to have been wrought five years ere he appeared in the Royal Academy display as an “Honorary Exhibitor;” doubtless the youngest of his class before or since that date. It was done in his eighth year, and one plate comprises several subjects, thus:—1. The Head of an Ass; which, by the way, is not thoroughly understood, if one may so write of the production of so capable an artist; for the head is not well articulated with the neck, or complete in drawing as to placing the eyes on a level with each other. Yet it is full of truth in the rendering of texture and expression, as the beast bites sideways at the large-leaved herbage; his ears are standing well above his head, and one eye is turned towards us in a very asinine fashion, steadfastly watching, while the other is directed downwards as the animal’s wrenching nibble goes on. 2. Is the Head of a Shorthorned Sheep, with the exact expression of nature in its ever mobile and quivering lips; the eye is that of the timid creature, yet seems to meditate. The foreshortening of the horns is astonishing as the workmanship of a child-draughtsman. 3. Is the Head of a Sheep in the act of browsing; this calls for no remark, except that of general admiration for its excellent drawing. 4. Is the Head, on a larger scale than the others, of a long-tusked, deep-snouted Boar, while dozing in the sun. Besides these, and probably of even earlier origin, is a not very well-drawn Head of a Sheep in full-face; here the eyes are a little out of drawing. On this account, although the defect may be due to the greater difficulty of the subject when so placed, we are inclined to believe this etching to be more remote in execution than the above-described examples, which are, as the productions of a boy of eight years of age, so far wonderful that they are really better drawn and more truly expressive than the work of most adult artists. On the same plate with the sheep’s head in front view is (1) a Donkey, at full length, so to say, i.e., standing on all fours, and biting at his leg—a capital study, full of action and spirit; (2) a Donkey and her Foal.

On another plate are the heads of a lion and tiger (see the last note), in which the differing characters of the beasts are given with marvellous craft, that would honour a much older artist than the producer. The drawing of the tiger’s whiskers—always difficult things to manage—is admirable in its rendering of foreshortened curves. Then comes a drawing of a young bull, wrought by Edwin Landseer at nine years of age, and etched by his by no means very distant senior brother Thomas; this brute’s walk, the peculiar shouldering, lounging way of his kind, rolling from shoulder to shoulder, is here in perfection; the bull whisks his tail lightly from side to side.

Next is another specimen, but on a larger scale than those which are above described. It exhibits an extraordinarily finely drawn bull, the foreshortening and handling of whose form is perfect; his expression is that of a rigid conventionalist—for bulls are not unlike men in these matters of temperament—a thoroughly old-fashioned John Bull. Behind this is a foreshortened view of a horse reclining, and, in the distance of the field, which supplies a landscape-background to the composition, is a goat. The work of the young artist’s tenth year shows great progress to have been made, for he wrought the whole design, and entirely etched the next plate, which represents two groups of cattle placed one above the other on the paper, which is disposed, as artists say, upright-fashion, and of about the size and proportion of a large octavo book. In the lower section is the representation of a ponderous beast, couched at ease, yet with all his strength drawn together by the attitude of resting with his limbs beneath his bulky body; he has downward-pointing horns. He is a surly “oldish” bull, who breathes the breath of content in summer, but with possibilities of fury in his irritable moodiness; not a stupid bull, although terrible when exasperated; he is evidently apt to lose his temper on slight occasions. Behind this surly monster stands an intensely stupid brute, one who is evidently given up to all sorts of self-indulgences, and who in every possible fashion spoils himself; his countenance is absolutely besotted; he has a hog-like air, and his very tail hangs heavily straight down from his back; with these is grouped a maternal cow, who is large, if not like Byron’s “Dudu,” “languishing and lazy.”

Executed in the same year of the draughtsman’s life we have another group, drawn on the same plate with the above-named studies of animals. This is a bovine family. Maternity itself appears in the shape of a stumpy-footed cow; fatherhood, in the portly figure of a bull whose knit brows and self-satisfied look about his chaps, his broad bowed neck and vast chest, are honoured by imitation in the little bull-calf which reclines before its parents, ruminating, if not meditating, and “the picture of his father.” Produced at about the same period as the last is an admirable etching of a cow and bull-calf. The former, by the leanness of her haunches and flanks, shows the stress of the debt of milk she is paying to the latter, or to the more exacting pail: on her back a ridge of spines is distinct; large aspiring promontories of bone crop up in the rearward regions of the milky mother, not unlike, in their ruggedness and the slopes which form their sides, the steep forms of granite mountains as they are thrust through sedimentary deposits of a later date. At her feet lies the blunt-nosed bull-calf of her heart.

Next, in the same collection, and said to be of still earlier origin, comes a much larger production, etched by Mr. Thomas Landseer from a drawing by his brother, our subject. This noble plate represents an Alpine mastiff of the great St. Bernard breed, which had been in the second decade of this century imported to this country by a gentleman of Liverpool.[17]