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• EDWIN HENRY LANDSEER SERIES

Besides, the painter has gone to more in-depth details to paint the fleece just below the neck.

The stag was probably alert as it may have heard some movement or dogs barking from a distance and wanted to keep safe. The other details that can be picked from the main subject are the erect ears. He appears well-fed and healthy, a sign of plenty in the wilderness. This stag was defined as a royal stag, thanks to the twelve points on that show on his antlers. It also has its eyelashes painted to precision. For example, viewers notice the moisture from the warm air around his nostrils. He took to me to define the stag's appearance straight to its finer details. In the painting, Sir Henry shows a stag standing with his nostrils pointed to the sky, enjoying the beauty and the fresh air around him. This is partly the reason the painting garnered a lot of interest over a hundred years after it was created. However, for the Monarch, the stag appears to be a master of its surroundings and does not look threatened by human beings. In most cases, he showcased them as trophies or being at the mercies of the hunters who ran wild with dogs across the highlands. He was particularly interested in the stags and deers, which he painted in large numbers after the 1830s. Therefore, the Monarch of the Glen was one of Landseer's many paintings of the vast wildernesses that he saw during his travels. He grew an affinity with Sir Walter Scott and the locals across Scotland. During his numerous visits, the virgin beauty of the Scottish landscape fascinated him. Landseer, although born in London in 1802, travelled widely across Scotland since he was 22 years of age. The painting is available for viewing by the public at the gallery. Pundits call the gallery a perfect depiction of Britishness, which embodies all the characteristics of Scottish and British culture. These lions dominate Trafalgar Square at the entrance of the gallery. In this gallery, he also commissioned some bronze lions at the base of Nelson's Column. The Monarch was first exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts that is housed in the National Gallery. Richard Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1982, p.82.ĭoes this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.Hans Holbein Paintings The Exhibition of the Painting Two of these were destroyed in the flood of 1928, but five are still in the Tate collection ( A00702, A00703, N00412, N00409 and N00415).įurther reading: Robin Hamlyn, Robert Vernon's Gift - British Art for the Nation 1847, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p.51, no.40, reproduced p.51. Vernon went on to add several more works by Landseer to his collection, seven of which he bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1847. The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1830 and was probably the first Landseer acquired by Robert Vernon, who had an important collection of 19 th Century British art. Dogs figure largely in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and the subject of this picture may have been suggested by Landseer's concurrent commission to illustrate the Waverley novels, which appeared from 1829 onwards.

About half consist of commissioned, life-size dog ' portraits', the rest are independent subjects, smaller in scale and usually with a narrative content.

Landseer's dog paintings of the 1830s are among his most popular works. Whereas in Highland Music, he compares the wailing of the bagpipes with the dogs' howling, in the later painting he contrasts a mother feeding her baby with a terrier suckling her puppies. Landseer juxtaposes human and canine behaviour in a similar way in another of his Scottish interiors, A Highland Breakfast ( c.1834, Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The reviewer for the Court Journal thought the title of Highland Music was 'facetious' and described the work as 'half-a-dozen dogs howling to the sound of their master's bagpipes - as if they had never heard it before, and as if the principal performers in such a concert would be likely to continue it under such accompaniments' ( Court Journal, 6 February 1830). The influence of Dutch art is clear in the minute detail and the effect of light, especially on the domestic utensils, but the touch of humour created by the dogs is unique to Landseer. Typical of the series, it is a highly finished interior scene, focusing on the humble pleasures of everyday life in the Highlands.

EDWIN HENRY LANDSEER SERIES

He painted this picture at his Highland retreat in Glen Feshie, near Braemar, where the Duchess of Bedford had built a series of wooden and turf huts. Highland Music is one of a group of Scottish genre subjects Landseer produced during the late 1820s and early 1830s.