That Edwin Landseer chose to paint animals seems to have been a matter of circumstance and temperament. From the age of four or five he drew cows, horses and dogs, compulsively and instinctively. That led naturally to a career as an animal painter. While still a boy Landseer was drawing and etching farm animals for a succession of modest Essex patrons, chief among them W. W. Simpson. Landseer's superb anatomical drawings reveal how essential to his art was his knowledge of animal forms. From the beginning it was the extraordinary naturalism of his works, quite as much as his technical facility, which so impressed his contemporaries. Such studies gave him the assurance of a virtuoso style in which to explore his powers of imagination in painting. Landseer's brilliance as an animal painter was augmented because of his tendency to give his animal scenes a moral dimension. These pictures were widely circulated in his time in the form of engravings, often made by his brother Thomas. Edwin Landseer was the youngest son of an engraver. The three Landseer brothers studied under Benjamin Robert Haydon, the historical painter, from 1815. Haydon encouraged Landseer to study animal anatomy. In 1816, Landseer entered the Royal Academy Schools, but he had already exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in the previous year. He was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1826 aged only twenty-four, and full Academician in 1831 when not yet thirty. In 1824 Landseer made the first of many visits to Scotland. He fell in love with the Highlands, which inspired many of his later paintings such as `The Monarch of the Glen' (Royal Academy 1851, John Dewar & Sons Limited). He also visited Sir Walter Scott, who admired his paintings and chose him as one of the illustrators to the Waverley edition of his novels. In the 1830's his work gained wide popularity and was bought both by the aristocracy and the newly important middle class. He himself moved freely in aristocratic circles, and after 1836 he enjoyed royal patronage, especially in the 1840's when Victoria and Albert also discovered Scotland. He paid his first visit to their home, Balmoral in 1850 to paint a large group portrait of the royal family. He was knighted that year even though the painting was never finished. In the 1860's he modelled the lions at the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square and these were unveiled in 1867. In 1866 he declined the presidency of the Royal Academy, and after 1870 sank slowly into madness. A major exhibition of his work was held at the Tate Gallery in 1981, organised by Richard Ormond.
Bought by Edward Right 1889 from Tadema's studio sale, thence sold to Otto Andreae Thence by descent in the family