Landseer was now thirty-six years old, famous and honored, a welcome guest at the palaces of royalty. In 1835 he had painted Dash, the favorite spaniel of the Duchess of Kent, the pet of whom Leslie speaks in his autobiography: "The Queen [Victoria], I am told, had studied her part very diligently, and she went through it extremely well. I don't know why, but the first sight of her in her robes brought tears into my eyes, and it had this effect upon many people; she looked almost like a child. She is very fond of dogs, and has one very favorite little spaniel, who is always on the lookout for her return when she has been from home. She had of course been separated from him on that day longer than usual, and when the state coach drove up to the steps of the palace, she heard him barking with joy in the hall, and exclaimed, 'There's Dash!' and was in a hurry to lay aside the sceptre and ball she carried in her hands, and take off the crown and robes, to go and wash little Dash."
In 1839 Landseer painted a picture of the Queen, which she gave to Prince Albert; the next year, the Queen and the Duke of Wellington reviewing a body of troops; in 1842, "The Queen and Children;" the Princess Royal with her pony and dog; the Queen and the Princess Royal; "Windsor Castle in the Present Time;" Islay, the Queen's pet terrier; Sharp, her favorite; Princess Alice in a cradle, with the dog Dandie Dinmont; Alice with the greyhound Eos, belonging to Prince Albert, and later "Her Majesty the Queen in the Highlands," "Prince Albert at Balmoral," which was engraved for the Queen's book, "Leaves from a Diary in the Highlands;" Princess Beatrice on horseback, the Queen at Osborne, and the Queen on a white horse.
Landseer was always a favorite with the royal family. In the last painful years of his life, when he suffered from overtaxed nerves, they were his devoted friends. He writes to his sister from Balmoral, June, 1867: "The Queen kindly commands me to get well here. She has to-day been twice to my room to show additions recently added to her already rich collection of photographs. Why, I know not, but since I have been in the Highlands I have for the first time felt wretchedly weak, without appetite. The easterly winds, and now again the unceasing cold rain, may possibly account for my condition, but I can't get out. Drawing tires me; however, I have done a little better to-day. The doctor residing in the castle has taken me in hand, and gives me leave to dine to-day with the Queen and the rest of the royal family… Flogging would be mild compared to my sufferings. No sleep, fearful cramp at night, accompanied by a feeling of faintness and distressful feebleness."
When Landseer was in good health, he was the most genial of companions. He was the intimate friend of Dickens, Thackeray, Browning, and other noted men. Leslie tells the following incident at a dinner party at the house of Sir Francis Chantrey, the sculptor. "Edwin Landseer, the best of mimics, gave a capital specimen of Chantrey's manner, and at Chantrey's own table. Dining at his house with a large party, after the cloth was removed from the beautifully polished table, – Chantrey's furniture was all beautiful, – Landseer's attention was called by him to the reflections, in the table, of the company, furniture, lamps, etc. 'Come and sit in my place and study perspective,' said our host, and went himself to the fire. As soon as Landseer was seated in Chantrey's chair, he turned round, and, imitating his voice and manner, said to him: 'Come, young man, you think yourself ornamental; now make yourself useful, and ring the bell.' Chantrey did as he was desired; the butler appeared, and was perfectly bewildered at hearing his master's voice, from the head of the table, order some claret, while he saw him standing before the fire."
Some one urged Sydney Smith to sit to Landseer for his portrait. He is said to have replied in the words of the Syrian messenger to the prophet Elisha: "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"
At another time Landseer was talking to Sydney Smith about the drama, and said: "With your love of humor, it must be an act of great self-denial to abstain from going to the theatres." The witty clergyman replied, "The managers are very polite; they send me free admissions which I can't use, and, in return, I send them free admissions to St. Paul's."
Bewick, the artist, said: "Sir Edwin has a fine hand, a correct eye, refined perceptions, and can do almost anything but dance on the slack wire. He is a fine billiard-player, plays at chess, sings when with his intimate friends, and has considerable humor.
"Landseer is sensitive, delicate, with a fine hand for manipulation, – up to all the finesse of the art; has brushes of all peculiarities for all difficulties; turns his picture into all manner of situation and light; looks at it from between his legs, – and all with the strictly critical view of discovering hidden defects, falsities of drawing, or imperfections. See to what perfection he carries his perception of surface, hair, silk, wool, rock, grass, foliage, distance, fog, mist, smoke! how he paints the glazed or watery eye!"
A writer in the London Daily News says: "Sir Edwin's method of composition was remarkably like Scott's, except in the point of the early rising of the latter. Landseer went late to bed, and rose very late, coming down to breakfast at noon; but he had been composing perhaps for hours. Scott declared that the most fertile moments for resources, in invention especially, were those between sleeping and waking, or rather before opening the eyes from sleep, while the brain was wide awake. This, much prolonged, was Landseer's time for composing his pictures. His conception once complete, nothing could exceed the rapidity of his execution."
In 1840, at the country house of Mr. William Wells, Landseer had his first violent illness associated with severe depression, to which attacks he was subject all the rest of his life. He went abroad for a time, travelling in France, Switzerland, and Austria, but he was constantly longing for his studio, where, he said, "his works were starving for him."
"Coming events cast their shadows before them," sometimes called "The Challenge," a vigorous stag bellowing his defiance to hunters or other animals of his kind; "Shoeing," which has been engraved many times, the mare, Old Betty, belonging to his friend Mr. Jacob Bell; and "The Otter Speared," a huntsman surrounded by yelping dogs, while he uplifts a poor otter on his spear, were all exhibited in 1844, and won great praise.
From Sir Edwin's sporting-scenes many persons gained the impression that he was a keen sportsman, which was not the case. Ewen Cameron, an old forest keeper of Glencoe, who for more than twenty-four years accompanied Landseer with the sketch-book and gun, tells how the highland gillies were annoyed when a magnificent stag came bounding toward them, and Sir Edwin hastily thrust his gun into their hands, saying, "Here! take! take this!" while he pulled out his book and began to sketch. They murmured greatly in Gaelic, but, says Cameron, "Sir Edwin must have had some Gaelic in him, for he was that angry for the rest of the day, it made them very careful of speaking Gaelic in his hearing after."
The companion pictures "Peace" and "War," painted in 1846 – the former a beautiful scene on a cliff overlooking Dover harbor, the latter a ruined cottage with a dying horse and dead rider near the door – were sold to Mr. Vernon for seventy-five hundred dollars. The publishers of the engravings from these pictures paid Landseer fifteen thousand dollars for them. "The Stag at Bay," belonging to the Marquis of Breadalbane, one of Landseer's strongest pictures, appeared the same year.
In 1848, "A Random Shot," one of the artist's most pathetic pictures, was painted. Stephens thus describes it: "It is a snow piece, the scene high on the mountain, whose most distant ridges rise above the mist. The snow lies smooth; and for miles, so far as the eye can penetrate the vapor, there is nothing but snow, which covers, but does not hide, the shapes of the hilltops. A few footprints show that a doe has come hither, attracted, doubtless, by her knowledge of a pool of unfrozen water which would assuage her thirst. Some careless shooter, firing into a herd of deer, had hit the doe, whose fawn was with her, and, mortally wounded, she came to die; the poor fawn had followed. There the victim fell; there the innocent one strove, long after the mothers form was cold, to obtain milk where an unfailing source had been. The mother has fallen on her side; the long limbs, that once went so swiftly, are useless, and the last breath of her nostrils has melted the snow, so that, stained with her blood, the water trickled downwards until it froze again."
Monkhouse says, in his "Landseer Studies": "He painted dogs and deer as no man ever painted them before; he inspired one with a humor and both with a poetry beyond all parallel in art; he added to this a feeling for the grandeur and sublimity of nature, which gave to his pictures a charm and a sentiment which all can feel; he never painted anything false or ignoble, vulgar or unmanly; he won as an artist purely the affection and admiration of a whole people as scarcely any man, not a poet, or a soldier, or a statesman, or a philosopher, has ever won them before…
"Landseer may be said to have mastered other animals, but the deer mastered him. He raised dogs almost to the scale of humanity, but deer raised him to a level of higher being. His love for the deer may not have been so deep, but it was more elevating, less self-regarding, and it ended at last in stimulating his imagination to produce pictures deeper in thought and more awful in sentiment than any attempted by an animal painter before."
A writer in Cornhill says: "Landseer's perceptions of character were remarkably acute. Not only did he know what was passing in the hearts of dogs, but he could read pretty closely into those of men and women also. The love of truth was an instinct with him; his common phrase about those he estimated highly was that 'they had the true ring.' This was most applicable to himself; there was no alloy in his metal; he was true to himself and to others. This was proved in many passages of his life, when nearly submerged by those disappointments and troubles which are more especially felt by sensitive organizations such as that which it was his fortune – or misfortune – to possess.
"It was a pity that Landseer, who might have done so much for the good of the animal kind, never wrote on the subject of their treatment. He had a strong feeling against the way some dogs are tied up, only allowed their freedom now and then. He used to say a man would fare better tied up than a dog, because the former can take his coat off, but a dog lives in his forever. He declared a tied-up dog, without daily exercise, goes mad, or dies, in three years.
"His wonderful power over dogs is well known. An illustrious lady asked him how it was that he gained his knowledge. 'By peeping into their hearts, ma'am,' was his answer. I remember once being wonderfully struck with the mesmeric attraction he possessed with them. A large party of his friends were with him at his house in St. John's Wood; his servant opened the door; three or four dogs rushed in, one a very fierce-looking mastiff. The ladies recoiled, but there was no fear; the creature bounded up to Landseer, treated him like an old friend, with most expansive demonstrations of delight. Some one remarking 'how fond the dog seemed of him,' he said, 'I never saw it before in my life.'
"Would that horse-trainers could have learned from him how horses could be broken in or trained more easily by kindness than by cruelty. Once when visiting him he came in from his meadow looking somewhat dishevelled and tired. 'What have you been doing?' we asked him. 'Only teaching some horses tricks for Astley's, and here is my whip,' he said, showing us a piece of sugar in his hand. He said that breaking in horses meant more often breaking their hearts, and robbing them of all their spirit…"
In 1850, the "Dialogue of Waterloo" was produced, with the Duke of Wellington and his daughter-in-law, the Marchioness Douro, on the battlefield. It is said that eighteen thousand dollars were paid for the copyright of this painting.
This year, Landseer was made a knight, at the age of forty-eight. The next year, 1851, he painted the well-known "Monarch of the Glen." "The Midsummer Night's Dream" of the same year, painted for the great engineer, Isambard K. Brunel, who ordered a series of Shakespearian subjects from different artists, at four hundred guineas each, was afterwards sold to Earl Brownlow for fourteen thousand dollars.
In 1857, in "Scene in Brae-mar – Highland Deer," we have, says Stephens, "the grandest stag which came from his hands. This was sold in 1868 for four thousand guineas." "The Maid and the Magpie," painted for Jacob Bell, and by him presented to the nation, appeared in 1858. The pretty girl is about to milk a cow, but turns to listen to her lover, when a magpie steals a silver spoon from one of the wooden shoes at her side. In connection with this picture, M. F. Sweetser tells this incident:
"Sir Edwin once painted a picture for Jacob Bell for one hundred guineas, which the latter soon afterwards sold for two thousand guineas. Placing the latter amount in Landseer's bank, Mr. Bell narrated the circumstance, suppressing both his own name and that of the purchaser, and adding that the seller would not keep the money, but wanted another picture painted for it. The master was so charmed with this generous act that he said, 'Well, he shall have a good one.' And afterwards, pressing Bell to tell him who his benefactor was, the latter exclaimed, in the words of Nathan, the Israelite: 'I am the man.' The picture which resulted was 'The Maid and the Magpie.'"
In 1860, "Flood in the Highlands," called by Stephens "probably the strongest of all his pictures," was painted. He was now fifty-eight. "I remember him," says Stephens, "during the painting of this picture, on the Tuesday before it was sent to the Academy, – putting a few touches on the canvas. He looked as if about to become old, although his age by no means justified the notion; it was not that he had lost activity or energy, or that his form had shrunk, for he moved as firmly and swiftly as ever, – indeed he was rather demonstrative, stepping on and off the platform in his studio with needless display, – and his form was stout and well filled.
"Nevertheless, without seeming to be overworked, he did not look robust, and he had a nervous way remarkable in so distinguished a man, one who was usually by no means unconscious of himself, and yet, to those he liked, full of kindness. The wide green shade which he wore above his eyes projected straight from his forehead, and cast a large shadow on his plump, somewhat livid features, and, in the shadow, one saw that his eyes had suffered. The gray 'Tweed' suit, and its sober trim, a little emphatically 'quiet,' marked the man; so did his stout, not fat nor robust, figure; rapid movements, and utterances that glistened with prompt remarks, sharp, concise, with quiet humor, but not seeking occasions for wit, and imbued throughout with a perfect frankness, distinguished the man."
In 1864, "Man proposes, God disposes," was painted, an Arctic incident suggested by the finding of the relics of Sir John Franklin. The purchaser of this picture, Sweetser says, paid Landseer twenty-five hundred pounds for it.
In 1865, "The Connoisseurs" was painted, and presented by Sir Edwin to the Prince of Wales. It represents two dogs looking over the shoulders of the artist, while he makes a drawing. Monkhouse says: "The man behind his work was seen through it, – sensitive, variously gifted, manly, genial, tender-hearted, simple, and unaffected, a lover of animals and children and humanity; and if any one wishes to see at a glance nearly all we have written, let him look at his own portrait, painted by himself, with a canine connoisseur on either side."
"Lady Godiva's Prayer," painted in 1866, was sold in 1874 for £3360, or nearly seventeen thousand dollars. This year, Sir Edwin first appeared as a sculptor, in a vigorous model of a "Stag at Bay." In 1867 his bronze Lions were placed at the base of the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square, thus associating two great names. The government had commissioned him to execute this work eight years before, in 1859, but sickness and other matters had prevented. That this commission was a care to him, is shown by a letter to a friend: "I have got trouble enough; ten or twelve pictures about which I am tortured, and a large national monument to complete… If I am bothered about anything and everything, no matter what, I know my head will not stand it much longer."
Again he writes: "My health (or rather condition) is a mystery beyond human intelligence. I sleep well seven hours, and awake tired and jaded, and do not rally till after luncheon. J. L. came down yesterday and did her best to cheer me… I return to my own home in spite of a kind invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone to meet Princess Louise at breakfast."
"The Swannery invaded by Sea-Eagles" was one of Landseer's most notable later works. "The Sick Monkey," painted in 1870, was purchased by Thomas Baring for three thousand guineas, and bequeathed to Lord Northbrook, the Viceroy of India.
When Sir Charles Eastlake died, the presidency of the Royal Academy was urged upon Landseer, but he declined. He had become wealthy through his painting, his property amounting to about one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which he left mostly to his brothers and sisters.
Sir Edwin's life was now drawing to its close. Miss Mackey says, in Cornhill, concerning his last long illness: "Was ever any one more tenderly nursed and cared for? Those who had loved him in his bright wealth of life now watched the long days one by one telling away its treasure. He was very weak in body latterly, but sometimes he used to go into the garden and walk round the paths, leaning on his sister's arm. One beautiful spring morning, he looked up and said: 'I shall never see the green leaves again;' but he did see them, Mrs. Mackenzie, his sister, said. He lived through another spring. He used to lie in his studio, where he would have liked to die. To the very end he did not give up his work; but he used to go on, painting a little at a time, faithful to his task.
"When he was almost at his worst, so some one told me, they gave him his easel and his canvas, and left him alone in the studio, in the hope that he might take up his work and forget his suffering. When they came back, they found that he had painted the picture of a little lamb lying beside a lion. This and 'The Font' were the last pictures ever painted by that faithful hand.
"'The Font' is an allegory of all creeds and all created things coming together into the light of truth. The Queen is the owner of 'The Font.' She wrote to her old friend and expressed her admiration for it, and asked to become the possessor. Her help and sympathy brightened the sadness of those last days for him. It is well known that he appealed to her once, when haunted by some painful apprehensions, and that her wise and judicious kindness came to the help of his nurses. She sent him back a message, bade him not be afraid, and to trust to those who were doing their best for him, and in whom she herself had every confidence…
"He wished to die in his studio, his dear studio, for which he used to long when he was away, and where he lay so long expecting the end; but it was in his own room that he slept away. His brother was with him. His old friend came into the room. He knew him and pressed his hand."
Landseer died on the morning of October 1, 1873, and was buried October 11, with distinguished honors, in St. Paul's Cathedral.