Famous European Artists Part 24

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR EDWIN LANDSEER.]

The boy Edwin began to draw very early in life. Miss Meteyard quotes these words from John Landseer: "These two fields were Edwin's first studio. Many a time have I lifted him over this very stile. I then lived in Foley Street, and nearly all the way between Marylebone and Hampstead was open fields. It was a favorite walk with my boys; and one day when I had accompanied them, Edwin stopped by this stile to admire some sheep and cows which were quietly grazing. At his request I lifted him over, and, finding a sc.r.a.p of paper and a pencil in my pocket, I made him sketch a cow. He was very young indeed then--not more than six or seven years old.

"After this we came on several occasions, and as he grew older this was one of his favorite spots for sketching. He would start off alone, or with John (Thomas?) or Charles, and remain till I fetched him in the afternoon. I would then criticise his work, and make him correct defects before we left the spot. Sometimes he would sketch in one field, sometimes in the other, but generally in the one beyond the old oak we see there, as it was more pleasant and sunny."

While still very young, the lad learned the process of etching from his father and elder brother Thomas, the latter one of the most eminent of engravers. At seven, he drew and etched the heads of a lion and a tiger, "in which," says Frederick G. Stephens, "the differing characters of the beasts are given with marvellous craft, that would honor 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."

At thirteen he drew a magnificent St. Bernard dog. Edwin saw him in the streets of London, in charge of a man servant. He followed the dog to the residence of his owner, and obtained permission to make a sketch of him. The animal was six feet four inches long, and, at the middle of his back, stood two feet seven inches in height. These creatures are capable of carrying one hundredweight of provisions from a neighboring town to the monks at the Monastery of St. Bernard, eighteen miles.

Stephens says: "It is really one of the finest drawings of a dog that have ever been produced. We do not think that even the artist at any time surpa.s.sed its n.o.ble workmans.h.i.+p. The head, though expansive and domical in its shape, is small in proportion to that of a Newfoundland dog; the brow is broad and round; the eyes, according to the standard commonly a.s.sumed for large dogs, are far from being large, and are very steadfast in their look, without fierceness; the ears are pendulous, placed near to the head, and fleshy in substance." A live dog, admitted into the room with this picture, became greatly excited.

When Edwin was thirteen, in 1815, he exhibited some pictures at the Royal Academy; a mule, and a dog with a puppy. The following year he became a student at the Royal Academy. He was a bright, manly boy, with light, curly hair, gentle and graceful in manner, and diligent in his work. Fuseli, the keeper of the Academy, was much pleased with him, and, looking around the room upon the students, would say, "Where is my little dog boy?" This was in allusion to the picture of Edwin's favorite dog, Brutus, lying at full length of his chain, near a red earthenware dish. The picture, though very small, was sold in 1861 for seventy guineas.

In 1818, "Fighting Dogs Getting Wind" was exhibited at Spring Gardens, and caused a great sensation. The _Examiner_ said, in a review of the works of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water-Colors, "Landseer's may be called the great style of animal painting, as far as it relates to the execution and color, and the natural, as far as it concerns their portraiture. Did we see only the dog's collar, we should know that it was produced by no common hand, so good is it, and palpably true. But the gasping and cavernous and redly stained mouths, the flaming eyes, the prostrate dog, and his antagonist standing exultingly over him; the inveterate rage that superior strength inflames but cannot subdue, with the broad and bright relief of the objects, give a wonder-producing vitality to the canvas."

Landseer also exhibited this year the "White Horse in a Stable." It disappeared from the studio, and twenty-four years later, in 1842, it was discovered in a hayloft, where it had been hidden by a dishonest servant. It was sent to Honorable H. Pierrepont, for whom it was painted, with a letter from Landseer, saying that he had not retouched the picture, "thinking it better when my early style was unmingled with that of my old age."

In 1819, "The Cat Disturbed" was exhibited, afterwards engraved with the t.i.tle of "The Intruder." It represents a cat chased to the upper part of a stable by a dog, into whose place she had ventured. Dr. Waagen said, "This picture exhibits a power of coloring and a solidity of execution recalling such masters as Snyders and Fyt."

About this time a lion in the Exeter Change Menagerie died, and the young artist succeeded in getting the body and dissecting it, acting upon Haydon's advice, of years before, to "dissect animals, the only mode of acquiring a knowledge of their construction."

The result was the painting of two large pictures, six feet by eight, and six feet by seven feet six inches respectively: "A Lion Disturbed at his Repast," and "A Lion Enjoying his Repast," followed by a third, "A Prowling Lion."

In 1821, the chief pictures exhibited were "The Rat-Catchers," where four dogs are catching rats in an old barn; and "Pointers, To-ho," a hunting-scene, which sold in 1872 for over ten thousand dollars. The following year, Landseer received from the directors of the British Inst.i.tution seven hundred and fifty dollars as a prize for "The Larder Invaded." Eighteen other pictures came from Landseer's studio this year.

The most famous of Sir Edwin's early works was "The Cat's-Paw," sold for five hundred dollars, and now owned by the Earl of Ess.e.x. Its present value is over fifteen thousand dollars.

"The scene," says Stephens, "is a laundry or ironing-room, probably in some great house, to which a monkey of most crafty and resolute disposition has access. The place is too neat and well maintained to be part of a poor man's house. The ironing-woman has left her work, the stove is in full combustion, and the hand of some one who appreciated the good things of life has deposited on its level top, together with a flatiron, half a dozen ripe, sound chestnuts. To the aromatic, appetizing odor of the fruit was probably due the entrance of the monkey, a muscular, healthy beast, who came dragging his chain and making his bell rattle. He smelt the fruit and coveted them; tried to steal them off the cooking-place with his own long, lean digits, and burnt his fingers.

"He looked about for a more effective means, and, heedless of the motherhood of a fine cat, who with her kittens was ensconced in a clothes-basket, where she blandly enjoyed the coverings and the heat, pounced upon puss, entangled as she was in the wrappings of her ease.

Puss resisted at first with offended dignity and wrath at being thus treated before the faces of her offspring. She resisted as a cat only can, with lithe and strenuous limbs; the muscular, light, and vigorous frame of the creature quivered with the stress of her energy; she twisted, doubled her body, buckled herself, so to say, in convulsions of pa.s.sion and fear, but still, surely, without a notion of the object of her captor.

"Yet he had by far the best of the struggle, for her tiger-like claws were enveloped in the covering which erst served her so comfortably; and, kicking, struggling, squalling, and squealing as strength departed from her, she flounced about the room, upset the coal-scuttle on the floor, and hurled her mistress's favorite flower-pot in hideous confusion on the 'ironing-blanket.' It was to no purpose, for the quadruped, with m.u.f.fled claws, was no match for her four-handed foe. He dragged her towards the stove, and dreadful notions of a fate in its fiery bowels must have arisen in her heart as nearer and still more near the master of the situation brought his victim.

"Stern, resolute, with no more mercy than the cat had when some unhappy mouse felt her claws--claws now to be deftly yet painfully employed, Pug grasped her in three of his powerful hands, and, as reckless of struggles as of yells, squeals, and squalls, with the fourth stretched out her soft, sensitive, velvety forepaw--the very mouse-slayer itself--to the burning stove and its spoils. What cared he for the bared backs or the spiteful mewlings of her miserable offspring, little cats as they were? He made their mother a true 'cat's-paw.'"

Soon after the exhibition of this picture, Sir Walter Scott came to London and took the young painter to Abbotsford. The novelist greatly admired Landseer's work, saying, "His dogs are the most magnificent things I ever saw, leaping and bounding and grinning all over the canvas." After this, Landseer visited Scotland nearly every year, charmed by its scenery and enjoying the hospitality of the n.o.bles.

In his thirty-second year, it seemed necessary that the painter should have a home removed from the soot and noisy traffic of London. A small house and garden, with a barn suitable for a studio, were purchased at No. 1 St. John's Wood, a suburban region, which derives its name from having been owned by the priors of the Hospital of the Knights of St.

John of Jerusalem. A premium of a hundred pounds being demanded for the house, Landseer was about to break off negotiations, when a friend said: "If that is the only obstacle, I will remove it. Go to the lawyers, and tell them to make out the lease, and that as soon as it is ready for signatures, you will pay the sum required; and I will lend you the money, which you can repay when it suits you, without interest."

The painter returned the money loaned, in instalments of twenty pounds each. Here he lived for nearly fifty years, his sister, Mrs. Mackenzie, being his housekeeper. Here he received more famous people than any other English painter save Joshua Reynolds. Here, as he grew wealthy, he brought his dogs and other pets; here the father, John Landseer, to whom the son was ever devotedly attached, died.

A writer in _Cornhill_ says: "There were few studios formerly more charming to visit than Landseer's. Besides the genial artist and his beautiful pictures, the _habitues_ of his workshop (as he called it) belonged to the _elite_ of London society, especially the men of wit and distinguished talents--none more often there than D'Orsay, with his good-humored face, his ready wit and delicate flattery. 'Landseer,' he would call out at his entrance, 'keep de dogs off me' (the painted ones). 'I want to come in, and some of dem will bite me--and dat fellow in de corner is growling furiously.'"

In 1826, when Landseer was twenty-four years old, "Chevy Chase" was painted, now at Woburn Abbey, the property of the Duke of Bedford. It is an ill.u.s.tration of the old ballad:--

"To drive the deer with hound and horne Erle Percy took his way, The chiefest harts in Chevy Chase To kill and bear away."

This year, he was made an a.s.sociate of the Royal Academy, an honor seldom given to so young a man. He was made a full member at thirty. His first important picture exhibited after this, in 1827, was "The Chief's Return from Deer-stalking." "It is," says Stephens, "one of the best of his compositions, the subject giving scope to all his powers in dealing with dogs, deer, and horses. Across the backs of a white and a black pony two magnificent antlered deer are bound. A young chief and his old companion, a mountaineer,--with traces of the wear and tear of a hard life on his cheeks and in his gaunt eyes,--step by the head of one of the horses. They go slowly and heedfully down the hill. Two dogs pace with them; one of these turns to a deer's skull which lies in the herbage."

"The Monkey who had seen the World" appeared at the same time as "The Chief's Return," and was engraved by Gibbon as "The Travelled Monkey."

The monkey, who has returned from his travels and meets his friends, is dressed in a c.o.c.ked hat and laced coat, with a wide cravat, breeches, buckled shoes, and a pendent eyegla.s.s. The latter, especially, astonishes his friends. Thomas Baring gave fifteen hundred guineas for this painting, and bequeathed it to Lord Northbrook.

Another picture of this time, engraved by John Pye, was thus described in the Catalogue: "William Smith, being possessed of combativeness, and animated by a love of glory, enlisted in the 101st Regiment of Foot. At the Battle of Waterloo, on the 18th of July following, a cannon-ball carried off one of his legs; thus commenced and terminated William's military career. As he lay wounded on the field of battle, the dog here represented, blind with one eye, and having also a leg shattered apparently by a musket-ball, came and sat beside him, as 'twere for sympathy.

"The dog became William's prisoner, and, when a grateful country rewarded William's services by a pension and a wooden leg, he stumped about accompanied by the dog, his friend and companion. On the 15th of December, 1834, William died. His name never having been recorded in an extraordinary Gazette, this public monument, representing the dog at a moment when he was ill, and reclining against the mattress on which his master died, is erected to his memory by Edwin Landseer and John Pye."

In this year, 1827, there was also exhibited the well-known "Scene at Abbotsford," with the celebrated Maida, Sir Walter Scott's favorite dog, in the foreground. Six weeks after the picture was painted, the dog died. "High Life" and "Low Life," exhibited in 1831, noteworthy on account of their size, being eighteen inches by thirteen and a half, were bequeathed by Robert Vernon to the nation, and are now in the National Gallery. "High Life" represents a gentle and slender stag-hound in a handsome home; "Low Life," a brawny bulldog, in a rude stone doorway.

Hamerton says: "Everything that can be said about Landseer's knowledge of animals, and especially of dogs, has already been said. There was never very much to say, for there was no variety of opinion and nothing to discuss. Critics may write volumes of controversy about Turner and Delacroix, but Landseer's merits were so obvious to every one that he stood in no need of critical explanations. The best commentators on Landseer, the best defenders of his genius, are the dogs themselves; and so long as there exist terriers, deer-hounds, bloodhounds, his fame will need little a.s.sistance from writers upon art."

In 1832, "Spaniels of King Charles's Breed" was exhibited; now in the National Gallery, as a gift from Mr. Vernon. Both these spaniels, pets of Mr. Vernon, came to a violent end. The white Blenheim spaniel fell from a table and was killed; the true "King Charles" fell through the railings of a staircase, and was picked up dead at the bottom. The picture was painted in two days, ill.u.s.trating Landseer's wonderful rapidity of execution. Yet this power, as Stephens well says, "followed more than twenty years' hard study."

Stephens records an amazing instance of Landseer's power. "A large party was a.s.sembled one evening at the house of a gentleman in the upper ranks of London society; crowds of ladies and gentlemen of distinction were present, including Landseer, who was, as usual, a lion; a large group gathered about the sofa where he was lounging. The subject turned on dexterity and facility in feats of skill with the hand. No doubt, the talk was ingeniously led in this direction by some who knew that Sir Edwin could do wonders of dexterous draughtsmans.h.i.+p, and were not unwilling to see him draw, but they did not expect what followed.

"A lady, lolling back on a settee, and rather tired of the subject, as ladies are apt to become when conversation does not appeal to their feelings or their interests, exclaimed, after many instances of manual dexterity had been cited: 'Well, there's one thing n.o.body has ever done, and that is to draw two things at once.' She had signalized herself by quas.h.i.+ng a subject of conversation, and was about to return to her most becoming att.i.tude, when Landseer said: 'Oh, I can do that; lend me two pencils, and I will show you.'

"The pencils were got, a piece of paper was laid on the table, and Sir Edwin, a pencil in each hand, drew simultaneously, and without hesitation, with the one hand the profile of a stag's head, and all its antlers complete, and with the other hand the perfect profile of a horse's head. Both drawings were full of energy and spirit, and, although, as the occasion compelled, not finished, they were, together and individually, quite as good as the master was accustomed to produce with his right hand alone; the drawing by the left hand was not inferior to that by the right."

In 1834, "Suspense," a bloodhound watching at a closed door for his wounded master, "A Highland Shepherd Dog rescuing Sheep from a Snowdrift," and "A Scene of the Old Time at Bolton Abbey" were exhibited. For the last, Landseer was paid two thousand dollars. It is now owned by the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, and is valued at more than fifteen thousand dollars. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made etchings from this and from several others of Landseer's works.

In 1835, "A Sleeping Bloodhound" (Countess) was exhibited. It was bequeathed by Mr. Jacob Bell to the National Gallery. "The hound was, one dark night (at Wandsworth), anxiously watching her master's return from London. She heard the wheels of his gig and his voice, but, in leaping from the balcony where she watched, she missed her footing, and fell all but dead at her master's feet. Mr. Bell (the owner of the dog) placed the hound in his gig and returned to London, called Sir Edwin Landseer from his bed, and had a sketch made then and there of the dying animal."

In 1837 came "The Highland Shepherd's Chief Mourner," representing the interior of a plain Highland home, the coffin of the shepherd in the centre, covered by his maud for a pall, his only mourner the dog who rests his head upon the coffin. A well-worn Bible is on a stool in front, with a pair of spectacles.

Ruskin calls this picture "one of the most perfect poems or pictures (I use the words as synonymous) which modern times have seen. Here the exquisite execution of the crisp and glossy hair of the dog, the bright, sharp touching of the green bough beside it, the clear painting of the wood of the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are language,--language clear and expressive in the highest degree. But the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood; the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle; the total powerlessness of the head, laid close and motionless upon its folds; the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness; the rigidity of repose, which marks that there has been no motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck upon the coffin-lid; the spectacles marking the place where the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life, how unwatched the departure, of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep,--these are all thoughts; thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds of equal merit as far as the mere painting goes,--by which it ranks as a work of high merit, and stamps its author, not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin or the fold of a drapery, but as a Man of Mind."

"The Portrait of the Marquis of Stafford and the Lady Evelyn Gower," in 1838, is considered Landseer's best portrait-picture. "A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society," exhibited in 1838, is the picture of a large Newfoundland dog named Paul Pry. "He lies in the broad sunlight, and the shadow of his enormous head is cast sideways on his flank as white as snow. He looks seaward with a watchful eye, and his quickness of attention is hinted at by the gentle lifting of his ears. The painting of the hide, here rigid and there soft; here s.h.i.+ning with reflected light, there like down; the ma.s.ses of the hair, as the dog's habitual motions caused them to grow; the foreshortening of his paws as they hang over the edge of the quay, and the fine sense of _chiaro-oscuro_ displayed in the whole, induce us to rank it," says Stephens, "with the painter's masterpieces."

Landseer was now thirty-six years old, famous and honored, a welcome guest at the palaces of royalty. In 1835 he had painted Dash, the favorite spaniel of the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, the pet of whom Leslie speaks in his autobiography: "The Queen [Victoria], I am told, had studied her part very diligently, and she went through it extremely well. I don't know why, but the first sight of her in her robes brought tears into my eyes, and it had this effect upon many people; she looked almost like a child. She is very fond of dogs, and has one very favorite little spaniel, who is always on the lookout for her return when she has been from home. She had of course been separated from him on that day longer than usual, and when the state coach drove up to the steps of the palace, she heard him barking with joy in the hall, and exclaimed, 'There's Das.h.!.+' and was in a hurry to lay aside the sceptre and ball she carried in her hands, and take off the crown and robes, to go and wash little Dash."

In 1839 Landseer painted a picture of the Queen, which she gave to Prince Albert; the next year, the Queen and the Duke of Wellington reviewing a body of troops; in 1842, "The Queen and Children;" the Princess Royal with her pony and dog; the Queen and the Princess Royal; "Windsor Castle in the Present Time;" Islay, the Queen's pet terrier; Sharp, her favorite; Princess Alice in a cradle, with the dog Dandie Dinmont; Alice with the greyhound Eos, belonging to Prince Albert, and later "Her Majesty the Queen in the Highlands," "Prince Albert at Balmoral," which was engraved for the Queen's book, "Leaves from a Diary in the Highlands;" Princess Beatrice on horseback, the Queen at Osborne, and the Queen on a white horse.

Landseer was always a favorite with the royal family. In the last painful years of his life, when he suffered from overtaxed nerves, they were his devoted friends. He writes to his sister from Balmoral, June, 1867: "The Queen kindly commands me to get well here. She has to-day been twice to my room to show additions recently added to her already rich collection of photographs. Why, I know not, but since I have been in the Highlands I have for the first time felt wretchedly weak, without appet.i.te. The easterly winds, and now again the unceasing cold rain, may possibly account for my condition, but I can't get out. Drawing tires me; however, I have done a little better to-day. The doctor residing in the castle has taken me in hand, and gives me leave to dine to-day with the Queen and the rest of the royal family.... Flogging would be mild compared to my sufferings. No sleep, fearful cramp at night, accompanied by a feeling of faintness and distressful feebleness."

When Landseer was in good health, he was the most genial of companions.

He was the intimate friend of d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, Browning, and other noted men. Leslie tells the following incident at a dinner party at the house of Sir Francis Chantrey, the sculptor. "Edwin Landseer, the best of mimics, gave a capital specimen of Chantrey's manner, and at Chantrey's own table. Dining at his house with a large party, after the cloth was removed from the beautifully polished table,--Chantrey's furniture was all beautiful,--Landseer's attention was called by him to the reflections, in the table, of the company, furniture, lamps, etc.

'Come and sit in my place and study perspective,' said our host, and went himself to the fire. As soon as Landseer was seated in Chantrey's chair, he turned round, and, imitating his voice and manner, said to him: 'Come, young man, you think yourself ornamental; now make yourself useful, and ring the bell.' Chantrey did as he was desired; the butler appeared, and was perfectly bewildered at hearing his master's voice, from the head of the table, order some claret, while he saw him standing before the fire."

Some one urged Sydney Smith to sit to Landseer for his portrait. He is said to have replied in the words of the Syrian messenger to the prophet Elisha: "Is thy servant a _dog_, that he should do this great thing?"

At another time Landseer was talking to Sydney Smith about the drama, and said: "With your love of humor, it must be an act of great self-denial to abstain from going to the theatres." The witty clergyman replied, "The managers are very polite; they send me free admissions which I can't use, and, in return, I send them free admissions to St.

Paul's."

Bewick, the artist, said: "Sir Edwin has a fine hand, a correct eye, refined perceptions, and can do almost anything but dance on the slack wire. He is a fine billiard-player, plays at chess, sings when with his intimate friends, and has considerable humor.