Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands

Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) was the greatest British animal painter of the nineteenth century, and for his contemporaries the greatest artist of the age. The secret of his success lay in his ability to invest the natural world with feeling and imagination, allied to brilliant descriptive powers. Landseer was born in 1802, the son of the author and engraver, John Landseer, and his wife, Jane Potts. A child prodigy, he first exhibited animal studies at the Royal Academy in 1815, when he was just thirteen. By the time of his first visit to Scotland in 1824, he had already made a name for himself with works like Fighting Dogs Getting Wind and Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveller . Scotland became an inspiration for his finest works. In his paintings he caught the spirit of what it was that attracted visitors to Scotland: the wildness and splendour of the landscape, the sense of space and solitude, and the spectacle of nature red in tooth and claw. Landseer's enthusiasm for the Highl