Not only did Landseer rival some of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century in painting fur and feathers, but he depicted animals with sympathy, as if he believed that "the dumb, driven cattle" possess souls. His dogs and other animals are so human as to look as if they were able to speak. The painter was the son of John Landseer, the engraver, and was born in London. He received art lessons from his father, and, when little more than a baby, would sketch donkeys, horses, and cows at Hampstead Heath. Some of these sketches, made when Landseer was five, seven, and ten years old, are at Kensington. He was only fourteen when he exhibited the heads of A Pointer Bitch and Puppy. When between sixteen and seventeen he produced Dogs fighting, which was engraved by the painter's father. Still more popular was The Dogs of St. Gothard rescuing a Distressed Traveller, which appeared when its author was eighteen. Landseer was not a pupil of Haydon, but he had occasional counsel from him. He dissected a lion. As soon as he reached the age of twenty-four he was elected an A.R.A., and exhibited at the Academy The Hunting of Chevy Chase. This was in 1826, and in 1831 he became a full member of the Academy. Landseer had visited Scotland in 1826, and from that date we trace a change in his style, which thenceforth was far less solid, true and searching, and became more free and bold. The introduction of deer into his pictures, as in The Children of the Mist, Seeking Sanctuary, and The Stag at Bay, marked the influence of Scotch associations. Landseer was knighted in 1850, and at the French Exhibition of 1855 was awarded the only large gold medal given to an English artist. Prosperous, popular, and the guest of the highest personages of the realm, he was visited about 1852 by an illness which compelled him to retire from society. From this he recovered, but the effects of a railway accident in 1868 brought on a relapse. He died in 1873, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. On the death of Sir Charles Eastlake, in 1865, he was offered the Presidentship of the Royal Academy, but this honour he declined. In the National Gallery are Spaniels of King Charles's Breed, Low Life and High Life, Highland Music (a highland piper disturbing a group of five hungry dogs, at their meal, with a blast on the pipes), The Hunted Stag, Peace (of which we give a representation), War (dying and dead horses, and their riders lying amidst the burning ruins of a cottage), Dignity and Impudence, Alexander and Diogenes, The Defeat of Comus, a sketch painted for a fresco in the Queen's summer house, Buckingham Palace. Sixteen of Landseer's works are in the Sheepshanks Collection, including the touching Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, of which Mr. Ruskin said that "it stamps its author not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind."
WILLIAM BOXALL (1800—1879), after study in the Royal Academy Schools and in Italy, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1829 his first picture—Milton's Reconciliation with his Wife—and continued to contribute to its exhibitions till 1866. Though his first works were historic and allegoric, he finally became famous as a portrait painter, and reckoned among his sitters some of the most eminent men of the time—poets, painters, writers on art, and others, e.g. Copley Fielding, David Cox, Coleridge, Wordsworth. In 1852 Boxall became an associate, and in 1864 a full member of the Royal Academy; he was Director of the National Gallery from 1865 to 1874; and received the honour of knighthood in 1871, in recognition of the valuable services which he rendered to art.
PAUL FALCONER POOLE (1810—1879), a painter of high class of genre pictures as well as of history, exhibited his first picture at the Academy in 1830, The Well, a Scene at Naples. In 1838 he produced The Emigrant's Departure. Other pictures are May Queen preparing for the Dance, The Escape of Glaucus and Ione, The Seventh Day of the Decameron. Among the historic works of this artist are The Vision of Ezekiel (National Gallery) and others. Poole became a full member of the Academy in 1860.
GEORGE HEMMING MASON (1818—1872), a native of Witley, Staffordshire, found art to be surrounded by difficulties. His father insisted on his following the profession of medicine, and placed him with Dr. Watts, of Birmingham. A portrait painter having visited the doctor's house, young Mason borrowed his colour-box, and, unaided, produced a picture of such promise that the artist advised him to follow art. Mason left the doctor's house, made his way to Italy, and, without any teacher, developed an original style which is marked by simplicity of design, refinement of colour, delicacy of chiaroscuro, and pathos of expression. He was elected A.R.A. in 1868, but died of heart-disease before becoming a full member. Mason's best-known works are Campagna di Roma, The Gander, The Return from Ploughing, The Cast Shoe, The Evening Hymn, and The Harvest Moon, unfinished.
ROBERT BRAITHWAITE MARTINEAU (1826—1869), son of one of the Masters in Chancery, nephew of Miss Martineau, commenced life as an articled clerk to a solicitor. After four years' study of the law he forsook it for the brighter sphere of art, and entered the Academy Schools. In 1852 Martineau exhibited at the Academy Kit's Writing Lesson, from "The Old Curiosity Shop," which indicated the class of subjects which he delighted in. His Last Day in the Old House, and The Last Chapter, by their originality of conception, and exquisite painting, won the artist a renown which he did not long live to enjoy. He died of heart-disease.
JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS (1805—1876), the son of an eminent London engraver, began his career in art by painting studies of animals, and in 1828 was elected a Member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours. He afterwards travelled in Spain and Italy, painting many subjects, such as a Spanish Bullfight, Monks preaching at Seville, &c., and thence went to the East, where he stayed some years. He returned to England in 1851, and four years afterwards was made President of the Water-colour Society. In 1856 he exhibited A Frank Encampment in the Desert of Mount Sinai, which Mr. Ruskin called "the climax of water-colour drawing." In the same year he began to paint in oil colours, and frequently exhibited pictures of Eastern life, such as The Meeting in the Desert, A Turkish School, A Café in Cairo, &c. In 1859 he was made an Associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1866 a full member. In the South Kensington Museum there are two of Lewis's water-colour drawings, The Halt in the Desert and Peasants of the Black Forest, and a few of his studies from nature.
