17 Facts About Edwin Landseer

Edwin Landseer was something of a prodigy whose artistic talents were recognised early on.

Edwin Landseer studied under several artists, including his father, and the history painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who encouraged the young Landseer to perform dissections in order to fully understand animal musculature and skeletal structure.

Edwin Landseer was elected an Associate at the minimum age of 24, and an Academician five years later in 1831.

In 1823 Edwin Landseer was commissioned to paint a portrait of Georgiana Russell, Duchess of Bedford.

Edwin Landseer was knighted in 1850, and although elected to be President of the Royal Academy in 1866 he declined the invitation and the position went to Francis Grant.

Edwin Landseer was a notable figure in 19th-century British art, and his works can be found in Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kenwood House and the Wallace Collection in London.

Edwin Landseer's appeal crossed class boundaries: reproductions of his works were common in middle-class homes, while he was popular with the aristocracy.

Edwin Landseer taught both Victoria and Albert to etch, and made portraits of Victoria's children as babies, usually in the company of a dog.

Edwin Landseer made two portraits of Victoria and Albert dressed for costume balls, at which he was a guest himself.

Edwin Landseer was particularly associated with Scotland, which he had first visited in 1824 and the Highlands in particular, which provided the subjects for many of his important paintings.

Critics were troubled by the depiction of a languorous woman dominating a powerful animal and some concluded Edwin Landseer was implying the famous courtesan Catherine Walters, then at the height of her fame.

In 1862 Edwin Landseer painted a portrait of Louisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie holding her daughter Maysie.

In 1858 the government commissioned Edwin Landseer to make four gold lions for the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, following the rejection of a set in stone by Thomas Milnes.

Edwin Landseer accepted on condition that he would not have to start work for another nine months, and there was a further delay when he asked to be supplied with copies of casts of a real lion he knew were in the possession of the academy at Turin.

At his death, Edwin Landseer left behind three unfinished paintings: Finding the Otter, Nell Gwynne, and The Dead Buck, all on easels in his studio.

Edwin 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.

Edwin Landseer could procrastinate, sometimes for years, over certain commissions.