Edwin Henry Landseer

Romantic painter of animal subjects and scenes of Scottish rural life. Landseer's father and four of his siblings were artists, and his own talent emerged precociously. He entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of fourteen and within two years was exhibiting at the Academy and enjoying financial and critical success. He was elected an Associate in 1826 and a full Academician in 1831. Landseer first visited Scotland in 1824 and habitually returned in the autumn to hunt and sketch. Well-read and possessed of great personal charm, he was welcomed into the highest social circles. He became a great favorite of Queen Victoria; she commissioned him to paint her dogs and other pets as well as members of her family, and in 1850 granted him a knighthood. Despite the bouts of depression, paranoia, and alcoholism that darkened his later life, he succeeded between 1857 and 1866 in producing four monumental bronze lions for the base of Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square.

[Great British Paintings Label Text]