[The following passage comes from the year-long multi-part article on Landseer's drawings that appeared inthe 1875 Art-Journal. The illuminated H begins this passage in the April 1875 issue. — George P. Landow.]
aydon, the painter, was proud of having had Edwin Landseer as a pupil in his studio, for in his Dairy, dated june I, 183:, is this entry:— “I have produced Landseer, Eastlake, Lance, and Harvey;” but Edwin’s two elder brothers, Thomas and Charles, were also fellow-students with him. Haydon writes, in his autobiography:— “In 1815 Mr. Landseer, the engraver,” — their father — “had brought his boys to me, and said, ‘When do you let your beard grow, and take pupils ?’ — I said, ‘If my instructions are useful or valuable, now.’ — ‘Will you let my boys come ‘?’ — I said, ‘Certainly.’ Charles and Thomas, it was immediately r arranged, should come every Monday, when I was to give them work for the week. Edwin took my dissections of the lion, and I advised him to dissect animals—the only mode of acquiring their construction—as I had dissected men, and as I should make his brothers do." Edwin Landseer was at that time but thirteen years of age; how longer he remained with Haydon we know not, neither is it very easy to trace from the boy’s subsequent career what influence the teachings of the master —an artist of undoubted genius, but wrongly directed, as all his after-life proved—had upon the pupil. [97]
Bibliography
J.D. “Studies and Sketches by Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A.” Art-Journal (1875): 97-100. Hathi Trust version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 23 March 2014
27 March 2014