Edwin Landseer ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ (detail), about 1851, Scottish National Gallery Purchased by the National Galleries of Scotland as a part gift from Diageo Scotland Ltd, with contributions from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Dunard Fund, the Art Fund, the William Jacob Bequest, the Tam O’Shanter Trust, the Turtleton Trust, and the K. T. Wiedemann Foundation, Inc. and through public appeal 2017 (NG 2881) © National Galleries of Scotland.
Landseer’s ‘Monarch of the Glen’ at National Gallery One of the world’s best known animal painting, Sir Edwin Landseer’s ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ is the centrepiece of a focused exhibition of 14 works that for the first time explores the close connections between the painter, Sir Edwin Landseer (1802–1873) and the National Gallery of Art, London. 29 November 2018 – 3 February 2019.]]>
Source: National Gallery of Art, London
“Landseer’s greatest enjoyment was to wander in the lonely glens, or climb to the steep mountain-top, in search of that nature, animate or inanimate, with which his heart was in accord and there it was that he derived the inspiration which prompted the greater part of his noblest production.” (Obituary from The Report of the Council of the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, 1873)
No British painting of the 19th century is as immediately recognisable as ‘The Monarch of the Glen’. It has so often been reproduced that it is part of Britain’s shared visual memory; however, this means that it can be hard to look at it with fresh eyes.
The exhibition demonstrates Landseer’s connection to the tradition of Old Master painting, and his strong interest in another great animal painter’s study of anatomy – George Stubbs, whose monumental horse painting “Whistlejacket” (about 1762) can be seen close by in Room 34. Landseer owned Stubbs’s collection of anatomical drawings of the horse and imitated his study of animal anatomy. Included in the show is George Stubbs’s ‘Working drawing for ‘The Seventh Anatomical Table of the Muscles … of the Horse’ (1756–8, Royal Academy of Arts, London) alongside Landseer’s ‘Ecorche drawing of a dog’s leg’ (1821, Victoria and Albert Museum, London), and ‘A Dead Stag’ (date unknown, National Galleries of Scotland).
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