The most interesting, if not the best, picture of 1865 by Landseer was his own portrait, styled “The Connoisseurs,” a humorous piece, comprising portraits of two dogs, who look appreciatively over his shoulder while he makes a drawing. “The flesh painting is too white as well as pinky to be true to nature, opaque and rather coarse, but the dogs who look over his shoulder at the sketch he is making, supply the title to the picture. Canine meditation and the result on a dog’s face of critical habits were never even thought of before, much less ever painted, as they are here. The dog on our right will not, it seems, give a hasty verdict in favour of his master’s work, that on our left will, like other critics, follow his neighbour. If anything could justify a man’s wish to be a dog it would be that Sir Edwin might paint him. What a gentle dog is he on our right!” “Déjeûner à la Fourchette,” a donkey feeding, a boy near, was not a fortunate picture. “Adversity” and “Prosperity” had contrasted subjects in the life of a horse. In the latter we had a superbly elegant bay horse; his hide has an inner glow such as would delight Titian to paint it; he sniffs the air gladly and looks from on high far off; his limbs are perfectly formed, and his body is a model for a Greek sculptor, and although too small in proportion for the body, his head is elegant. By his side is a dandy groom, the least satisfactory part of the picture. “Adversity” gives the other side of the same medal. A cab-horse in a low inn-yard sniffs wearily a mass of corn that is locked up; the shabby collar of servitude is about his neck, and, worse than all, has rubbed to bleeding some of that golden bay skin, which, a little too perfectly it may be, remains to the poor beast of all his beauty, pride, and delight in life; he sniffs in vain, almost afraid to go too near the locked food, and feebly, apologetically, paws the stones with worn hoofs. The artist never told a tale better than by these pictures, and probably never painted a horse’s hide better than that of the youthful model. These works were sold with Mr. Albert Grant’s pictures, April 28, 1877; the former for £1480, the latter for £1501.