Cheeky Highlander

Description

Deer Stalkers Returning
After Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, RA engraved by Henry Thomas Ryall
engraving, printed by McQueen, 1864
56.5 x 72cm (22 1/4 x 28 3/8in).

Price includes UK Mainland Delivery

The ‘Deer Stalkers Returning’ depicts a typical scene of the stalkers with the Highland ponies loaded with stags and deerhounds heading home from the hill to the lodge.

Painted by one of the stars of the Victorian era and etched by the Queens own engraver – this artwork is a Highland Icon and probably only ever came about because of an illicit affair between the artist and a member of the English aristocracy who would escape to Glenfeshie to enjoy each other’s company. Click on the link for more details!



Artist - Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, RA

An extremely popular artist born in 1802 and died in 1873. He was well known for his paintings of animals – particularly horses, dogs, and stags. He designed the lion sculptures at the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.

He was something of a prodigy as a child and studied under several artists, including his father, and Benjamin Robert Haydon, who encouraged the young Landseer to perform dissections to fully understand animal musculature and skeletal structure.

In 1823 Landseer was commissioned to paint a portrait of Georgiana Russell, Duchess of Bedford, twenty years older, they began an affair. That affair has a fabulous bit of gossip and intrigue in Glenfeshie and led to Landseer was particularly associated with Scotland which provided the subjects (both human and animal) for many of his important paintings including the majestic stag study The Monarch of the Glen (1851). He was also commissioned to produce illustrations for the Waverley Edition of Sir Walter Scott's novels.

Knighted in 1850, and although elected to be president of the Royal Academy in 1866 he declined the invitation due to Mental Health issues.

Landseer was rumoured to be able to paint with both hands at the same time, for example, paint a horse's head with the right and its tail with the left, simultaneously.

He was also known to be able to paint extremely quickly—when the mood struck him. He could also procrastinate, sometimes for years, over certain commissions.

Landseer's death on 1 October 1873 was widely marked in England: shops and houses lowered their blinds, flags flew at half mast, his bronze lions at the base of Nelson's column were hung with wreaths, and large crowds lined the streets to watch his funeral cortege pass to his burial in St Paul's Cathedral, London.

Engraver - Henry Thomas Ryall (August 1811 – 14 September 1867)

Ryall was an English line, stipple and mixed-method engraver and appointed the royal engraver by Queen Victoria. Forty of his works are in the National Portrait Gallery in London.