Sir Edwin Landseer

by Frederic George Stephens

Having disposed of our materials about the professional and family lineage of the Landseers, it will be desirable, before entering upon the chief subject of this text, to draw together all it is needful to state of his very remarkable parent, the engraver and engravers’ champion. We shall do so without regard to the chronological parallelism of their lives; a course of treatment which admits simplicity of arrangement. The births of three able sons are important facts in the history of any man who might be so honoured in parentage. Thomas, the eldest son, was born, we believe, in 1796; Charles, the second son, Aug. 2, 1799; Sir Edwin Henry, in 1802; March 7th was the date given on his coffin-plate, but there are doubts about this matter, even among the Landseer family. Including the daughters, the names of this family ran thus in the order of their births:—Jane, who married Mr. Charles Christmas, and died at the birth of her first child; Thomas, Charles, Anna Maria, Edwin, Jessica, i.e. the present Miss Landseer, and Emma, now Mrs. Mackenzie. The last two survive.

According to the original constitution of the Academy, engravers had no place in it. Thus they were denied the privilege of considering themselves artists at all. This absurdity was not much reduced when, in the third year of its existence, the body decided on admitting six “Associate Engravers” as a distinct and inferior class.[8]

As we have thus noted, the position of engravers in the honour-bestowing body of their profession had been anomalous, and beneath the pretences, as well as the merits and reputations, of many distinguished men, who, while not unwilling to join the academical association, declined to do so on conditions which at once marked their alleged inferiority to the professors of other branches of art, and placed them in a lower grade than the painters, sculptors, and architects with whom, nevertheless, they claimed to be equal. They complained especially, that, in addition to the above-given sources of discontent, a law of the Academy restricted them from more than one of the privileges and advantages of the exhibitions:—1st, of that law which declared that “each Associate-Engraver shall have the liberty [an unfortunate form of expression] of exhibiting two prints, either compositions of his own, or engravings from other masters.” Thus, while other members were entitled to contribute eight pictures, sculptures, or what not, without limitation as to the size of each example, the engravers might exhibit not more than two, which, by the very conditions under which they were produced, must be small. 2ndly, the engravers objected to the concluding section of the same law, which ran thus: “and these shall be the only prints admitted to the Royal Exhibition.” By these measures the engravers were affected, and their art depreciated. This state of things has been mended now, and engravers are admitted to the full academical honours. The history of the earliest phases of the contest, and a statement of the case are in Mr. John Pye’s “Patronage of British Art,” where the exertions of John Landseer and others are described. It is strange that although this measure of justice has been vouchsafed, the lots of honour fell to two of the staunchest “outsiders” who refused to become candidates for the Associateship until the standing of their profession was recognized: while John Landseer remained an Associate for nearly fifty years, and died without further distinction in 1852, but five years before the election of Mr. Cousins. Mr. Doo’s election occurred the next year after that of Mr. Cousins. The latter became an Associate thirty years later than John Landseer; the former was an Associate but one year, being elected A.R.A. in 1856, and R.A. in 1857. Mr. Cousins resigned his R.A.ship, and became a Retired Royal Academician in 1879. The first to accept honour was John Landseer.

It was with the intention of putting the true position of the engraver’s art and its professors before the world, and of doing so in the most effectual fashion, that John Landseer, in 1806, delivered lectures on engraving to large audiences at the Royal Institution, and thus laid out those broad and high views of art for which he has been justly honoured. He defined engraving as a species of sculpture performed by incision, and, by defending that view with spirit and skill, became the champion of his profession. Mr. H. Crabb Robinson described John Landseer’s lecturing on “The Philosophy of Art,” at a later occasion, December 5, 1813, at the Surrey Institution. “He is animated in his style,” said Mr. Robinson, “but his animation is produced by indulgence in sarcasms and in emphatic diction. He pronounces his words in italics, and by colouring strongly he produces an effect easily.”[9] In the year in which the lectures on engraving were delivered, John Landseer was elected A.-E.R.A., under protest, as it were, from himself, that he received the distinction with a view to more effective action in favour of his fellow-sufferers. In furtherance of this object he, with very little effect, presented a memorial to the Academicians, and, as he said, experienced from Sir Martin Archer Shee and others “a very great deal of illiberality, and was finally repulsed in a most ungracious way.”[10] After this, says the author of a biography of John Landseer,[11] the disappointment preyed upon his mind so deeply that he turned his attention from the practice of his profession to the study of archæology. This statement requires a considerable quantity of salt. No doubt this failure of so many hopes and efforts embittered his memory for a long time. It is said, though, as Mr. Pye told us, it would be difficult to verify the assertion, that an Associate-Engravership in the total number of six, which became vacant on the death of John Brown, in 1801, remained vacant because no outsider offered himself until Landseer’s election in 1806. There were only five such members of the Academy during the interval in question, and Val. Green, Collyer, James Heath, Anker Smith, and James Fittler were tenants of the five posts. The intensity of professional feeling on the subject may be surmised from this fact.

There is this much to be said about John Landseer’s alleged neglect of his own profession for the studies of an archæologist: he published “Observations on the Engraved Gems brought from Babylon to England by Abraham Lockett, Esq., considered with reference to Scripture History;” but this was not done until 1817, or ten years after the memorializing of the Royal Academy. The object of this work was to show that Babylonian cylinders, the “gems” in question, were not used as talismans or amulets, but as signets of monarchs or princes—a conclusion which is not far from the now accepted truth. He next issued “Sabæan Researches,” 1823, a work founded on remains brought from “Babylon,” by the above-named traveller, comprising letters on antiquities, and lectures delivered at the Royal Institution. These works have been superseded by later ones, and more scientific studies than were to be expected from an author who had been bred to another profession. He likewise published a discursive “Description of Fifty of the Earliest Pictures in the National Gallery,” 1834. He produced twenty plates by way of contribution to the “Antiquities of Dacca” (begun in 1816), a work which was never completed; this imperfectness likewise marked that book on the National Gallery which bears “End of Vol. I.” by way of “Finis,” to a tome which has no successor. He issued “The Review of Publications of Art,” 1808, a periodical of trenchant quality, but brief career; and he promoted a second periodical styled “The Probe,” 1837, which seemed—for it ran to not more than half-a-dozen numbers—designed to oppose the then recently-established “Art-Union” journal. The chief task of his later years was engraving his son Edwin’s famous picture of “The Dogs of St. Bernard,” on which he wrote a small explanatory pamphlet styled “Some Account of the Dogs and the Pass of St. Bernard.” In 1826 he was appointed one of the “Engravers to his Majesty.” Later, he exhibited at the Royal Academy some studies in water-colours from so-called Druidical Temples. He died on the 29th of February, 1852, aged eighty-three. It is a curious fact that on his death, and the vacancy caused in the Academy by that event, Leslie proposed that the disabilities of engravers should be removed.

The chief work of John Landseer was the bringing-up of his sons; in this he was thoroughly successful, and worthy of more

The Highland Shepherd’s Dog.