Scene 3, where Clifford murders the youth. Edwin Landseer sat for the

young victim, kneeling, with a rope round his wrists, being then “a curly-headed youngster, dividing his time between Polito’s wild beasts at Exeter Change and the Royal Academy Schools.”[21] The picture, after appearing at the Academy in 1816 (No. 518), was sent to America, and purchased by the Academy of Philadelphia, where it probably still is. It contains a very early portrait of our painter. But this was not the first likeness of Landseer exhibited; for “Master J. Hayter,” afterwards a portrait-painter of considerable note and some cleverness, although then but a youngster, painted “Master E. Landseer” as “The Cricketer,” and sent the work to the Royal Academy in 1815 (No. 450). “Master J. Hayter” died, an old man, not many years ago.[22]

That an artist so eminent as Landseer should have first presented himself to the public, or by his father have been so presented, in the ranks of the honorary exhibitors, is curious. The suffix “H.” to the name, and his being included with the class in question, leaves no doubt on the subject. It is understood that pictures by exhibitors of this class are not for sale, and the privilege of thus showing works is, or was, considered a compliment to persons of distinction. Thus we find among the honorary exhibitors of 1815, Sir George Beaumont; the

Rev. W. Holwell Carr, a benefactor to the National Gallery; J. Britton, the antiquary; and the Hon. Mary J. Eden. That a picture by a boy of twelve should be so exhibited is among the curiosities of Academy displays. Though in itself more meritorious, it is not less remarkable, than the fact that George Morland, in 1778, sent to the Academy a picture drawn with a poker, or that similar gatherings formerly comprised flower-pieces in human hair, and the like “works of art.”

The year 1816 witnessed the second appearance of our painter, and with a picture the title of which affirms his previous practice. This happened at “the Great Room in Spring Gardens,” then, and long before, a frequent place of exhibition, not unlike the present Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, that could be hired for all sorts of shows, and afforded many curious illustrations of the uses to which such a gallery could be put. In the year in question this “Great Room” was in the occupancy of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours--that is, the same association which now flourishes as the Society of Painters in Water Colours, its original title, which had for a time given way to the first-named designation, in consequence of a difficulty about dividing profits among the members, a considerable number of whom seceded, leaving those who remained unable to cover the walls with pictures. In this strait the remaining members invited a certain number of oil painters to contribute to the exhibition, and called the persons who consented to do so Associate-Exhibitors. The seceders comprised J. J. Chalon, De Wint, Gilpin, Hills, Reinagle, and Pugin the elder. David Cox had joined the Society shortly before, and “came to the rescue with a host of pictures;” but these did not suffice, and the expedient of inviting Associate-Exhibitors was employed to increase the popularity of the exhibitions.

It is noteworthy that among these “outsiders” who were taken in as stop-gaps was William Henry Hunt, one of the most artistic of English painters; he made his _début_ to the Society, of which he became one of the most distinguished members, in 1814, with two landscapes in oil. Hunt, like Landseer, had previously exhibited in the Royal Academy; he did so in 1807, when Sir Edwin was five years of age. The Society continued to use, until 1824, its style of the times of difficulty, and thereafter reverted to its former title and limits. It is worthy of note that this interval of disturbance had much to do with the bringing out of painters so diverse in their modes of thought as Hunt and Landseer. Haydon also found a field for the exhibition of his power in the gallery of the divided Society. In 1814 the last-named artist sent there “The Judgment of Solomon,” a picture which is admitted to be the best he painted, and to it the attention of Landseer’s biographer is directed, as having probably been purchased, as it was certainly long retained, by his pupil in memory of Haydon. The work passed from Sir Edwin’s possession to that of Lord Ashburton.

The connection between the Landseers and Haydon is close. Haydon was, at least in some degree, Edwin Landseer’s third teacher, if we put Nature before his father. In his peculiar way, which has to be taken into account ere we can appreciate the true sense of the following passage, Haydon describes the first entry of John Landseer’s sons to his charge:--

“In 1815, Mr. Landseer, the engraver, had brought his boys to me and said, ‘When do you let your beard grow, and take pupils?’ I said, ‘If my instructions are useful and valuable, now,’ ‘Will you let my boys come?’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ Charles and Thomas, it was immediately arranged, should come every Monday, when I was to give them work for the week. Edwin took my dissections of the lion, and I advised him to dissect animals--the only mode of acquiring [a knowledge of] their construction--as I had dissected men, and as I should make his brother do. This very incident generated in me a desire to form a school; and as the Landseers made rapid progress, I resolved to communicate my system to other young men, and endeavour to establish a better and more regular system of instruction than even the Academy afforded.” It would appear from this account that Edwin Landseer was not a pupil of Haydon’s in the sense of that term, which is applicable to his brothers’ studies, This notion seems to be supported, if not confirmed, by what is recorded hereafter.[23] It will not be forgotten that long before this date all the Landseers had made very considerable progress under their father, and so far as regards Edwin this is affirmed by Haydon.[23]

The pupils who followed the Landseers to Haydon’s studio were, Bewick, son of an upholsterer of Darlington, who died in 1866, without making any deep sign in art, and is the subject of Mr. T. Landseer’s biography, above mentioned; Harvey, the author of so many thousand designs for woodcuts, familiar to all headers of the “Penny Magazine,” and the by no means happy illustrator of the “Arabian Nights;” Edwin Chatfield, who died young; and George Lance, the popular fruit-painter. Of Thomas Christmas, another of Haydon’s pupils, we speak elsewhere. Before the Landseers studied under Haydon’s directions, Charles Lock Eastlake, the late President of the Royal Academy, had received invaluable counsel from a man whose broken career and hapless fortunes--which were, doubtless, in no small degree, of his own producing--are among the sad facts in the history of English painting. Haydon goes on: “All these young men looked up to me as their instructor and their friend. I took them under my care, taught them everything I knew, explained the principles of Raphael’s works in my collection of his prints, and did the same thing over again which I had done to Eastlake, without one shilling of payment from them, any more than from him. They improved rapidly. The gratitude of themselves and of their friends knew no bounds.” So far, so good; what follows of the writer’s career concerns us not now. Haydon was painting “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem,” and occupied a position which is rather difficult for men of another day fairly to appreciate. He had finished, with extraordinary _éclat_, “The Judgment of Solomon,” and, on account of the success this obtained, fancied himself at the top of the tree. He had certainly begun well for himself, and his earnest advocacy of the Elgin Marbles was honourable to him. To this advocacy he attributed an importance that was in excess of the fact, although it was of great service. He was a valuable champion in art by means of these marbles, and the studies which he made his pupils produce from them, to say nothing of the effect of his introducing to other countries casts of the statues, and promoting the bringing to London several of the Cartoons of Raphael, which his pupils Charles and Thomas Landseer drew manfully at the British Institution. Edwin Landseer made studies from the same works.

The catalogues of pictures exhibited in various galleries show that Edwin Landseer was at this period domiciled with his father and brothers, and Mr. Henry Landseer, his uncle, at 33, Foley Street or Foley Place. A few doors off, at No. 30, lived Thomas Campbell, a fellow-lecturer with John Landseer at the Royal Institution, where he delivered “Discourses on English Poetry.” This house was of much superior character to that which its present appearance indicates; the whole of the Foley Street region has “gone down” in the world within the writer’s memory of forty years’ duration.[24]

Haydon’s studio, at 41, Great Marlborough Street, was near for a youth’s walk; and that artist, with ill-concealed difficulties gathering around him, struggled yet against them without a sign of failure. Burlington House, where the Elgin marbles were placed while critical combats were waged about them ere they found a home in the British Museum, was close at hand, and the noblest academy for study. Independently of Haydon’s declaration, there can be no doubt that the Landseers derived immense benefit from the study of those models, even if they have shown nothing that can be directly referred to them. It is in the formation of style that one would expect benefit from these types, rather than in mere copying their characteristics. We fancy that in Landseer’s dogs, such as “A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society,” “Suspense,” and wherever breadth and grandeur of elements are involved, are results of impressions thus made. We cannot conceive a student who is familiar with these examples losing the ideas he had obtained from them. Not only did these works afford lessons which occurred fortunately with studies from Nature, but the advice of Haydon, that his pupils should dissect, was the sure guide to success. Having received such instructions from John Landseer as fixed Nature in his mind as the ever-present and indisputable director; and from Haydon the injunction to study the marbles as models of style, together with counsel and aid in dissecting human and leonine subjects, Edwin Landseer’s powers were in the fairest way of development. Ability and energy must have done the rest; they were all-sufficient to bring that reputation which is so widely spread.

To a mere painter of portraits of animals, no such fame, no such abundance of thanks as are due to Landseer would have accrued. A picture of Mr. So-and-So’s favourite mastiff, nay, a mere likeness of a favourite lap-dog, would, except to a few of the enthusiastic, have been nought to mankind; worse than nought for the reputation of the painter who failed to impart pathos and character to his productions, and so make, in one of them, the hat and gloves of a gentleman not unwelcome to

those who looked for nobler works from such masterly hands.[25] Yet there were not wanting men who, when the hat and gloves in question occupied prominent positions in a fine picture by Landseer, demurred greatly to his expending time on these objects, which had been better otherwise employed. To a hat and gloves could not, by any process known to humanity, be imparted either pathos or character. Even Edwin Landseer failed in this, and there were those who distinguished between the more heartily wrought and truly pathetic pictures, and such representations of domesticities. The distinction which many professed to draw between these pieces of _genre_ painting and “A Dialogue at Waterloo,” which represents the Duke of Wellington and his daughter-in-law, was that in the one the painter’s heart was set open by his subject, whereas in the others there was nothing to open the heart. Although produced with but few years between them, the style of the former is weak, timid, and thin; that of the latter, solid, masterly, and broad. It has been said, doubtless by way of apologizing for the shortcomings of the domesticities, that the inspiration of the inferior works was a graceful one. Although later in its origin, we saw more of the studies to which we just referred in the “Waterloo,” than in the intermediary genre pictures. Here, then, are examples (1) of mere portraiture, lacking pathos, and failing even in Landseer’s hands; (2) a pathetic, grand subject moving him when the Duke of Wellington was in question and Waterloo to aid, in forming a contrasted subject with that of a lady’s chamber and other scenes of his work. Experts could hardly believe their eyes when the unfortunate pictures appeared with Landseer’s name to them. It was not, then, in mere portraiture that success was to be looked for when neither pathos nor character are present. Yet these pictures are recognized as the failures of our artist; and we refer to them here, because they are no less antipathetic and antithetical to many others which we have yet to describe, than to the studies we have just indicated. As to Landseer’s studies, Mr. Ruskin wrote, in “Pre-Raphaelitism,” p. 30:--“Edwin Landseer is the last painter but one whom I shall name: I need not point out to any one acquainted with his earlier works the labour, or watchfulness of nature they involve, nor need I do more than allude to the peculiar faculties of his mind. It will at once be granted that the highest merits of his pictures are throughout to be found in those parts of them which are least like what had been before accomplished; and that it was not by the study of Raphael that he attained his eminent success, but by a healthy love of Scotch terriers.” Undoubtedly Landseer learned next to nothing from Raphael. In the next chapter we shall show that he enjoyed facilities for studying the “Cartoons,” _i.e._ those examples of Raphael’s art which are greatest in style. By means of the Elgin marbles Landseer was imbued with that care for style which distinguished his best works, from “Fighting Dogs,” to the “Swannery Invaded,” one of his earlier, and one of his later pictures.