Some of these drawings were exhibited by Haydon, 1819, in Pall Mall. “Messrs. Thomas Christmas and the two Landseers have taken their canvases to the Academy (British Institution), to make drawings from the Ananias,” &c., so says the “Annals,” No. 6, p. 436; and there seems to have been a tolerably unwise squabble about the pupils of Haydon and their drawings from this cartoon. (See pp. 442-3 of the same volume.)
“The Cat disturbed” was a picture of the year 1819, contributed to the British Institution, and afterwards engraved with the title of “The Intruder.” It, we believe, reappeared at the Gallery of the Society of British Artists in 1826, with the title of “The intrusive Visitor,” and represents a cat hunted to a high place in a stable by a dog, into whose quarters she had ventured. This was probably the work belonging to Sir C. Coote, of which Dr. Waagen wrote, in complete harmony with the opinion intimated in these pages, that Landseer at an early stage painted with greater solidity than in later days. It is now in the possession of Sir Philip de Malpas Egerton. Dr. Waagen says, “This picture exhibits a power of colouring”—by this he doubtless meant depth of tone, for colouring is simply out of the question in Landseers’s art—“and a solidity of execution recalling such masters as Snyders and Fyt.” Here we may as well say that no one has a true and complete, or even a satisfactory, notion of the spirit and vigour of our painter’s powers at this time unless he has studied these triumphs. They possess qualities not discoverable in his later works, but, of course, lack extraordinary merits which predominated when he grew older.
The preference often exhibited by Landseer for the British Institution appeared strongly in 1820, when a picture, which had been much talked about in professional circles, was shown at the gallery in Pall Mall, and attracted more admiration than the foregoing works. This was the famous “Alpine Mastiffs re-animating a distressed Traveller,” afterwards engraved by John Landseer, and due to studies of the magnificent dog of St. Bernard, to which we have referred as the property of “a gentleman of Liverpool,” according to the catalogue of the Spring Gardens gallery of 1817. This picture now belongs to Mr. S. Addington. (See below on the Exhibition in 1835 of “A Sleeping Bloodhound,” now at South Kensington.)
It must not be supposed that Landseer, so young as he was, produced small pictures only; on the contrary, the British Institution contained two paintings, one of which measured six feet by seven feet six inches; while its companion, “A Lion disturbed at his Repast,” was six feet by eight feet, “landscape way,” as artists say; i.e. the longer dimension was horizontal. At the same gathering appeared “A Lion enjoying his Repast.” We have observed Landseer with his brothers copying parts of the Cartoons of the same sizes as the originals. At this period—1821—he exhibited at the British Institution “The Seizure of a Boar,” with life-sized figures, which belongs to the Marquis of Landsdowne; it is full of action and worthy of the artist’s rising fame. We believe it has not been engraved. Haydon’s advice had been adopted—large works were undertaken, and a lion was dissected. An opportunity for the latter study occurred through the death of a lion in the Exeter Change Menagerie; this chance was seized, and the results were several lion pictures, as the above, and “A prowling Lion,” which was at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1822.
After these, lion subjects were not produced for a considerable time; opportunities for anatomizing such costly and rare animals as lions do not often occur; yet, as we may presently observe, our artist was at a later day fortunate in obtaining at least one other chance of this kind. The history of this matter, and an anecdote respecting it, are narrated further on.
In 1821 the progress of our subject was continued with rapidity and honour. The pictures of that year were, at the Royal Academy, “Ratcatchers,” which is now at Lambton Castle, the property of the Earl of Durham, and may be taken to illustrate Landseer’s admirable inventive powers at this period, although it is by no means the most important of his productions of the kind and date. Three dogs are in an old barn, and as if they had gone wild with passion and anxiety, because a fourth, whose extreme latter end is visible, is “scurrying” rats in depths below the broken floor of the
The Highland Mother.