SIE EDWIN LANDSEER, R.A. 



efforts, none with such a genius as Landseer's, and with the power to use it so 

 originally as he did, could have altogether succumbed to adverse circumstances : he 

 would set his face resolutely against difficulties and obstacles till he crushed them and 

 forced his way into public notice. Landseer, happily for himself, was not called upon 

 to wage this warfare : his art, from the first, accorded with public taste, and, in process 

 of time, he endued it with such poetical imagination, such truth, feeling, and exquisite 

 manipulation, that it became irresistible. The path he struck out is one we can scarcely 

 expect to see followed with anything like equal success, even were it attempted. 



Mr. Sandby, in his "History of the Royal Academy," gives Edwin Henry as the 

 Christian names of Landseer, but does not state on what authority ; and it is difficult 

 to understand why he so designates him, for the catalogues of the Academy, in 

 which the list of its members is regularly inserted, give only that by which the painter 

 has always beeen known ; nor have I ever seen the second name in any printed 

 publication but Mr. Sandby' s. He was born in London, March 7, 1802, and was the 

 youngest son of John Landseer, an engraver of considerable eminence in his time, 

 and an Associate of the Academy, who died, in 1852, at a very advanced age — 

 upwards of ninety years. There was an admirable portrait of the venerable 

 gentleman, painted by his distinguished son, who modestly called it a "sketch," 

 in the Academy exhibition of 1848. His two elder sons are, Thomas Landseer, 

 A.E.R.A., who has engraved so many of his youngest brother's finest works, and 

 Charles Landseer, R.A. Thus the three sons have all risen to eminence in their 

 professions. 



In the notice of the death of Sir Edwin Landseer which appeared in the Athenceum 

 is the following passage: — "Edwin Landseer's artistic descent has been traced by 

 Mr. Stephens in ' Early Works of Sir E. Landseer,' from William Byrne, with whom 

 Landseer the jeweller "—grandfather of Edwin—" placed his son John ; this Byrne was 

 a pupil of Aliamet and Wille, Aliamet was a pupil of J. P. Le Bas, who studied under 

 N. Tardieu ; the line of pupilage continues backwards without a flaw through Le 

 Pautre, Jean Andran, C. Andran, the uncle of Jean, to C. Bloemart, who was appren- 

 ticed to Crispin de Poess the elder, who had for a master Theodore Cuenhert, born in 

 1522." This art-genealogical roll is, at least, curious. 



Of Edwin's earliest years very little has been made known, except that from child- | 

 hood he manifested peculiar inclination for that special branch of art with which his 

 name has been so long associated, and which has won for him a reputation over the 

 wide world second to none of any modern painter. His father very wisely adopted the 

 best method of cultivating his talents, by accompanying him into the fields and to 

 Hampstead Heath to sketch the animals of various kinds that frequented the localities: 

 thus taking him at once to nature for models. The young artist's instincts led him 

 towards these dumb creatures, and we may feel assured that he studied their character 



