“Those acquainted with Hampstead and its environs will know these two fields at once. They lie nearly opposite what is now the Finchley Road Station of the North London Railway, and open out into West End Lane, a little below Frognal and the parish church. The old oak is still standing, though in withered decrepitude.[13] Indeed, till almost recent years, this was a region of oak-trees, and the whole neighbourhood was picturesque in the extreme. But much of this beauty is now effaced.
“Belonging to Sir John Maryon Wilson, Lord of the Manor of Hampstead, and abutting the corner of West End Lane, these fields will, at no late date, be covered with ‘villas’ and other buildings. But the fact that the site was Edwin Landseer’s first studio may be preserved by in some manner naming it after the illustrious painter.
“This interesting fact was told me by Mr. Howitt whilst walking through these fields about twenty years ago.
“Eliza Meteyard.”
The representation of animals in that mode of life in which the creatures existed, is that practice which, being best understood by the common world, would best sustain the objects of an artist who had to do with so many beasts which were but semi-barbarous, and not in a state of natural fierceness and wildness. The reader who wishes to see what was the merit of studies thus pursued, is referred to the South Kensington Museum, British Art Collection, where a series of nine drawings, executed at a very early period of his life by Edwin Landseer, and duly marked with the dates of their production, will not alone evoke admiration for the nature-given ability of the draughtsman, but testify, that with such ability to back the practice his father devised, the son was fortunate in receiving that father’s counsel. Further, the observer will note how zealously the boy-pupil bent his mind to the task with all the pleasantness
The Beggar.
which attends the exercise of natural powers. This is enforced by Miss Meteyard’s communication. Be it remembered that even such natural ability as that of Landseer was not trained without strenuous and long-continued labours.[14] The same course was pursued by him in painting, and he never, during this early stage, drew without nature; not, probably, carrying the principle of study in this fashion to the virtuous excess of William Henry Hunt, his contemporary, of whom it is said that he would not draw a pin without a model; a saying which implies the devotion of the man to truth, rather than that he refused to avail himself of his own experience. That the one would not paint a pin without a model is as true as that the other painted dogs best because he relied on nature from the first, and succeeded most in painting them while he relied most on nature. The drawings and sketches which are referred to were reserved by John Landseer from a much larger number of his son’s productions, and by means of notes in that father’s hand—notes written in affectionate pride, indicating that some of them were made when the boy was but five years old—declare the progress and precocity of their subject; so that we see how in the fifth year of his age Landseer drew well, and thoroughly studied animal character and humour.[15]