Edwin Landseer
1802–1873 · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland · Romanticism
The story
If you have stood among the giant bronze lions at the foot of Nelson's Column in London's Trafalgar Square, you have met Edwin Landseer's work. He modelled them late in life, a painter asked to sculpt, and reportedly kept a dead lion in his studio to study as it decayed.
Landseer was Victorian Britain's favourite animal painter, and Queen Victoria's too. He gave dogs and Highland stags human dignity and feeling, most famously in 'The Monarch of the Glen', a great antlered deer against the Scottish hills that has since been printed on everything from biscuit tins to whisky labels.
His last years were darkened by drink and breakdowns. When he died in 1873 the Trafalgar Square lions were hung with wreaths of mourning.
