i8o A Breath from the Veldt 



tion nothing finer has ever been done than the " Shepherd's Chief Mourner," 

 while, from the naturalist's point of view, no greater rubbish was ever turned 

 out than the "Eagles attacking a Swannery." And yet — it does not matter 

 who you are — when you gaze on this picture you are entranced with it. The 

 subject, execution, feeling, and composition are alike superb, but it is simply 

 the most ridiculous nonsense as representing a truthful scene from nature, and 

 in addition to this the eagles are dreadfully out of drawing. The eagles repre- 

 sented are the white- tailed species, till recently common on the coasts of 

 Scotland. In habits this eagle is almost vulturine, and being of a cowardly 

 nature and subsisting chiefly on fish, it rarely musters sufficient courage to 

 attack a farmyard and carry off an old hen. When it does — as has often been 

 seen — it will drop its prey like a hot coal on the slightest appearance of a 

 cock coming to the rescue. Its claws, indeed, are not of sufficient power to 

 strike and kill a bird of iany size, and living as it does to a large extent on 

 offal, it would just as soon think of striking a Piccadilly omnibus as a full- 

 grown swan. Landseer had evidently been listening to some stories of 

 peregrine falcons cutting down birds in mid-air, and thought it was a splendid 

 subject when he put in the eagle in the background breaking a swan's neck 

 by a single blow as it goes whizzing through space. 



Without detracting for one moment from the merits of so great a genius, 

 I think he must have got a bit hipped with public criticism sometimes, and 

 knowing the taste of the British public for the sensational at the expense of 

 the truthful, he produced such a picture as " The Monarch of the Glen." 

 This is really the ideal stag — not the real one — and Landseer did not think 

 much of it himself By a cunning subduing of the landscape, he intensified 

 the attraction of the central figure. I think I might even say it was a beauti- 

 ful pot-boiler, for I know several little stories in connection with that picture. 

 Though probably Landseer's best known and most popular picture, it is but 

 a poor production by comparison with the stag in " Browsing " — the most 

 perfect Highland stag ever painted. 



To be a great animal painter the artist must have a thorough knowledge 

 of the anatomy as well as the habits of birds and beasts, and this knowledge 

 means long practice and wide experience. The average man who can paint 

 a duck beautifully goes all to pieces over a hawk or a gull, and so on, simply 

 because he has not given, as he ought to have done, months of separate study 

 to each and every species throughout the animal kingdom. To those then 

 who know what a bird and a beast should be, how great is the genius of a 



