In Paton’s Barn

London, England and Millarville, Alberta

This painting surfaced when I was writing a blog piece about rescue dogs with barrels around their necks. The artist is Edwin Henry Landseer.

“Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveller (1820)“

I used another of Landseer’s paintings when I wrote a blog about polar bears last year.

I decided that if I am going to use his art to illustrate my blogs, I should do some research on Edwin Landseer and give him credit.

The first image that popped up when I searched “Landseer” was “The Monarch of the Glen (1851)”.

By coincidence, I own two images of this majestic elk. They are on antique signs, hanging on the walls of my shop.

The Hartford Fire Insurance Company used lithographs of Landseer’s elk image on their advertising.

Born in London, Edwin Henry Landseer (1802 – 1873) was a prodigy. He began painting commercially at 13 years of age; by the time he was 21, Landseer was commissioned to paint portraits of royalty.

In 1823 Landseer was appointed to portray Georgiana Russell, Duchess of Bedford. Despite her being twenty years older than he was, they began an affair.

Painting royals paid the bills (and obviously enhanced his sex life), but Landseer’s artistic passion was painting animals – dogs and horses in particular.

In this 1861 oil painting, The Taming of the Shrew, Landseer incorporates both of his passions; he painted a reclining horse, and a reflective young royal.

The Taming of the Shrew caused controversy. A powerful horse laying on straw in a stable, with a young woman resting her head on its flanks, while lightly touching the animal’s head with her hand, was not well received in stodgy old Victorian England.

Landseer survived the scandal. He went on to earn fame and fortune for his images of dogs, horses, and royals. In 1850 Sir Edwin Landseer was knighted by Queen Victoria.

Landseer sometimes anthropomorphized his subjects. In Laying Down the Law, the British Lord Chancellor is depicted as a poodle.

Edwin Landseer had a complicated mind. He was artistically gifted, but suffered from recurring bouts of melancholy, hypochondria, and depression, often aggravated by alcohol and drug use.

Landseer was rumoured to be able to paint with both hands at the same time, for example, paint a horse’s head with the right and its tail with the left, simultaneously.

Edwin Landseer died in 1873, but his art lives on.

From Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner (1837), in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to …