The intention is to juxtapose two dogs from different worlds and different social classes as representations of their absent owners. This particular work was conceived as a pair with Low Life (Tate A00702), and depicting a battle-scarred terrier, guarding his master's shop. About half consist of commissioned, life-size ' portraits', the rest are independent subjects, smaller in scale and usually with a narrative content. I am grateful to Alan Fausel of the American Kennel Club for his insights into dog breeds.Landseer's dog paintings of the 1830s are among his most popular works. Infrared reflectography completed with an OSIRIS InGaAs near-infrared camera with a 6-element, 150mm focal length, f/5.6 - f/45 lens 900-1700nm spectral response. 46) reproduces a painting by Landseer of the Duke’s favorite shooting pony, done in oil on board, dated 1825, and approximately the same size as A Deerhound (private collection). cat., National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2005, pp. Alison Hokanson 2021 On Scene in the Highlands see Richard Ormond, The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands, exh. The current title accordingly reflects the earliest known designation as A Deerhound. For Landseer and his near contemporaries, the appellation “deerhound” or “greyhound” would have sufficed. The characterization of the dog as a lurcher is correct, but it should be noted that the concept of purebreds and pedigrees, and the corresponding notion of crossbreeds, was not common practice until the 1850s. The term lurcher refers to a crossbreed of a sighthound, such as a deerhound or greyhound, with another dog type, typically a herding dog or terrier. These multiple identifications are easily explained. An undated, and to this point untraced, cutting from an exhibition or sale catalogue affixed to the reverse of the painting’s frame identifies the dog as a greyhound. The picture was exhibited in New York in 1969 as Scottish Lurcher, and it was bequeathed to The Met in 2018 with this title (see Exhibitions). The first documented publications call the painting A Deerhound and date it 1826 (see Dafforne 1875, Monkhouse, and Monkhouse ). The Subject: The subject has been identified as various types of dog. 2), which may be that of Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford (1781–1853), sister of the Duke of Gordon, who was one of Landseer’s most loyal patrons and possibly also his mistress. An infrared reflectogram of A Deerhound reveals, beneath the paint, a drawing of a woman’s head (fig. This monumental canvas, made near the outset of Landseer’s engagement with the Scottish Highlands, was one of his first aristocratic hunting portraits, and a milestone in his rise to prominence. The same dog appears, nuzzling under the hand of its master, George Gordon, 5th Duke of Gordon (1770–1836), in Scene in the Highlands, with Portraits of the Duchess of Bedford, the Duke of Gordon and Lord Alexander Russell (see fig. The present example is unusual in that it can be directly connected to a more ambitious composition. The picture may be classed among the small oils on board which served the artist as a means to explore his subjects and hone his technique. Landseer depicted the dog with great sensitivity, using delicate brushstrokes, while treating the background landscape more freely. The Painting: This painting depicts a deerhound, which were bred to hunt deer by running them down, a method known as coursing or deer stalking. His best paintings present the Highlands, and especially its pastime of deer hunting, as a paradigm of primal qualities: wild splendor juxtaposed with violent death. Landseer, a perennial visitor to the Highlands since 1824, was among the first painters to carry forward this Romantic vision in his art. Many of Landseer’s works are set in the Scottish Highlands, a rugged region in northwest Scotland that was immortalized in the nineteenth-century imagination as a place of untamed natural beauty and rustic tradition, most prominently in the novels of Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). His popular appeal owed much to his charmingly sympathetic portrayals of beloved pets, but his ambition is most evident in his images of wild animals, which possess a vitality and emotional drama that epitomize his era’s attunement to the natural world. Landseer’s paintings were esteemed by the artistic establishment and noble patrons, including Queen Victoria herself. He invigorated this cherished British artistic tradition with a brilliantly naturalistic style, borne of his prodigious technical skill, honed through rigorous observation, and intensified and elevated by the study of exemplars such as Peter Paul Rubens (see The Met 1990.75) and Frans Snyders (The Met 2001.112). The Artist: Landseer earned success as a painter of animal subjects, most notably dogs and deer, with a specialty in hunting scenes.
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