A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, ArchitectureWaters, Clara Erskine Clement
History
A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture
Waters, Clara Erskine Clement
Art -- History
We have passed over the best and most pleasant part of the life of this
great painter, for in 1840 he had an attack of illness from which he never
recovered. He travelled, and endeavored in every way to go on with his
work; but he was always subject to attacks of depression which were
sometimes so serious that his friends feared loss of reason. Of course
there was a different tone in his works--a seriousness and pathos, and at
times a religious element, which was very acceptable to some persons, and
he gained admirers where he had not found them before. But it can scarcely
be said that his last days were his best days, though he executed some
famous pictures.
In 1866 he exhibited a model of a stag at bay which was afterward cast in
bronze. The lions at the base of the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square
may be called the work of Sir Edwin, for he modelled one of the colossal
beasts from which the others were formed with but slight changes, and the
whole were cast under the care of Baron Marochetti.
In 1872 he painted "The Font," which is a religious subject. It represents
the sheep and lambs of the Gospel gathering round a font, upon the edge of
which are doves. A rainbow spans the sky; on the sides of the font are a
mask of the face of Christ and the symbols of the Atonement. This is a
painful picture, for while it is exquisite in conception its execution
shows the weakness of the painter, who so soon after he made it was
released from all his darkness and suffering.
Sir Edwin Landseer was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral with all the honors
which his genius and character merited. His works are known to almost
every child in America by means of the engravings which have been made
from them. His brother Thomas engraved hundreds of the designs of Edwin
and made them popular all over the world, and a large part of this success
was due to the skill and sympathy which Thomas devoted to what was largely
a work of love. Of course many other engravers have worked after Landseer,
and almost all his pictures have been reproduced in one style of engraving
or another.
There are nine portraits of Sir Edwin Landseer in existence--one by J.
Hayter when Landseer was thirteen years old and is represented as a
cricketer; one painted a year later by Leslie, in which Edwin Landseer is
the Rutland in the work called "Henry VI." It is owned by the Philadelphia
Academy. The next were not made until 1843, when Count d'Orsay painted two
portraits of him; in 1830 Dupper had made a drawing, and in 1835 a
photograph was taken; Baron Marochetti made a bust portrait of Landseer
which is in the Royal Academy, and in his picture called the
"Connoisseurs" Sir Edwin painted his own portrait, with dogs on each side
who stand as critics of his work. This was painted in 1865.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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