SIR EDWIN LANDSEER.* This number of the series of the

lives of the great artists is not so much a biography of Sir E. Landseer as a disquisition on a catalogue of his works. Perhaps there were difficulties in re- viewing the character of a painter who had so recently died, difficulties which do not hamper the biographer who writes of an artist whose belongings and friends have also all passed away ; still, in such a work the absence of anything like criticism of the artist as a man, cannot be otherwise than disappointing. If the written life of a painter is to be of any use as an example, then, not only what were his gifts, but how he used them, what was his character, and how it was affected by the success and appreciation his genius received, and how his genius was developed by his character, are things we want to know about him ; and though the task of making such an analysis may be difficult, on account of the natural consideration which is felt for the feelings of his surviving friends and relatives, we think, if the biography is undertaken at all, this task should not be overlooked. There would be advantages in such an analysis to the young student or artist, from the fact that Sir E. Landseer lived so recently that the conditions of society and the methods of study are in many ways still the same as they were when he worked. In studying the lives of the "Old Masters," though the general principles on which they laboured and invented are still inspiring as examples, the conditions of life by which they were surrounded were very different from those which surround the artist of the present day. The complications in all conditions of society have created in modern times temptations to the artist which

• The Great Artists-6:r Edwin Landseer. By F. G. Stephens. London : Bann) son Low and Co.

hardly existed in the simpler conditions of former days. In the days when art flourished best, no one was tempted to be an artist who had not the true artistic feeling, and, therefore, no art was produced that was not artistic, that was not a spon- taneous, real expression of the artist's feeling for the beauty and meaning of the appearance of things. Now, there is not only a large demand for a spurious growth of something which is called art, but which has no artistic feeling in it, a counterfeit produced purely as a manufacture for mercantile purposes, but those painters who possess true gifts, are surrounded by temptations to work their gifts in the service of business-like• aims which have nothing whatever to do with art. Many a beginner finds he can make an income and a mediocre posi- tion through the means of publishers and dealers more quickly and more easily by cleverly adapting the popular view of what a picture should be, taking the style and treatment which a master has for the moment made most popular, altering the often-repeated idea only so far as it is necessary to give it a barely superficial appearance of originality in design, than he can by developing that "sin- cerity of emotion " towards beauty which Nature has given to all• whom she intended to be artists. There is nothing so wholesome• in the way of an antidote against such temptations, as the study of the lives of the great artists, for such a study most undeni- ably proves that nothing but the single, pure aim of doing his very best as art, not counting time, cost, or labour, has ever given to an artist a great and lasting position.

Sir Edwin Landseer was endowed with great, natural, artistic gifts. Being so gifted, why was lie not greater as a painter P This may seem, perhaps, an ungrateful ques- tion to raise about one whose industry at his easel was un- flagging, and whose gifts were so undeniable. But the most practical lesson to be learnt from a study of his life is that even unflagging industry and natural gifts, high as they may place an artist in the distinguished society of his time, popular as they may make his works, do not alone secure for him the prize which the purest ambition of every artist ought to long for,—namely, that by the thought, the feeling, the beauty, and the worthy translation of Nature's truths, to be found in their work, their pictures, as long as the paint lasts on the canvas, shall have an ennobling, a re- fining influence. That is the practical use of the Fine Arts,' and there is no common-sense in the pursuit of them, no• reason for their existence as a serious element in social culture, if such an ennobling, refining influence is not their effect. Sir Edwin Landseer spent the hours away from the easel mostly in society, and mostly in what is called " the best. society." It is a question interesting to consider whether even " the best society " supplies the best opportunities for receiving those impressions of nobility and beauty which are food for the truest art. Mr. Ruskin is supposed to have said, " Fit yourself for the best society, and avoid' it,"—and to the artist of the present day this is, we believe, sound doctrine. The social intercourse which arises out of what is called " society " does not, as a rule, feed the better part of the artistic temperament. " Society," in its modern form, is so much of an occupation in itself that it does not work in satisfactorily with a very absorbing labour, and the posi- tion of a lion, even in the most distinguished, fashionable society, must be distasteful at once to the dignity and to the modesty of a Nature moulded in the finest fibre. Nature's own aristocracy, and those who hold rank and a distinguished position by inheritance, have, as a rule, but a very superficial sympathy with one another, if any,—the aristocracy by birth feeling, unconsciously, an unreasoning but unconquerable belief in its superiority, without any innate feeling of special worth ; and the class of those who are distinguished by Nature's gifts as individuals, feeling the limitations of intellectual vision which arise from the prejudices of the so-called "upper class." When we criticise Sir Edwin Landseer, and note- in what directions he falls short of the greatest, it is not with any desire to prove his inferiority, but to try and discover in his life the cause why he did not do justice to his artistic gifts, and to account for the great inequality in his work, dwelling on his shortcomings only as warnings to those who as artists have yet to lay down their plan of life. A really great artist is a rare being, not so much because purely artistic gifts are so very rare, as because the right development of such gifts requires a very unusual combination of qualities in the character and in the whole nature of the artist, a very unusual simplicity and directness of aim, combined with an equally rare and delicate discrimination of choice, and also with such enthusiasm and overpoweringlove for the feeling of his work, and such endurance and patience in the labour of it as few men pos- sess. Nobility and dignity in the aim, modesty, reticence, and sensibility in the expression, are all qualities we find in the best work over and above the more purely artistic gifts. All this requires distinction of soul, and how far is such distinction compatible with the desire for popularity ? Matthew Arnold Bays, with respect to this distinction of soul, " Of this quality the world is impatient; it chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, hates it; it ends by receiving its influence, and by undergoing its law. This quality at last inexorably corrects the world's blunders, and fixes the world's ideals."

Sir Edwin Landseer was, undoubtedly, eminently a popular artist. His popularity was wide-spread, which is in modern days always the case where the qualities which are fine in the work engrave well ; and early in life he must have learnt what were the qualities which told best in an engraving, his father and elder brother having been distinguished as engravers. A power of delineating characteristic expression, a pathos and a fun which were not too subtle for the popular understanding, a feeling for tone which he used not only as an artistic, but as an expressional quality, a happy sympathy with the popular interest shown in the choice of his subjects, these qualities Sir Edwin Landseer's work possessed in a remarkable degree, and likewise some more purely artistic excellencies. .A. fine power of drawing and designing line, a clever invention in com- posing light and shade which adds to the explicitness of the telling of the story, a certain realistic power of giving texture and surface which, though it fell short of the truest artistic merit, was thought wonderful by the popular eye,—all these were qualities which told with more power in the en- gravings than in the original pictures, for in these his short- comings as a painter were also notable. He was no colourist ; not that there was not a sense of colour to be found in some of his work, but it seems to have come by accident, and that he did not value it. The texture of his painting is monotonous, oily, shiny, and unpleasant. An authority in painting once observed that Landseer painted everything " in velvet," whether it was a bristly-haired terrier, or a Highland mother's homely gar- ment, or the blanket that covers the coffin in " The Shep- herd's Chief Mourner," or the wood of the coffin itself,—all was worked with a velvety touch. One object did not detach itself from another by any variety in the feeling for surface in different textures, and though we find a masterly dexterity of touch, it was the draughtsman's dexterity, not the painter's. With the exception of certain glossy effects of texture which now and then hinted that it was not so much the painter sense that was wanted as well-directed labour, there is no painting of Landseer's which would not have been as good or better as a work of art manipulated as a line drawing. Even where we see the realistic rendering of the shiny, glossy coat of a thorough-bred, as in the " Horse-breaker," the realistic render- ing stops short, and is made in itself false by the same quality of painting extending to the tendons in the legs and the parts of the surface texture which is not shiny or glossy in nature. But the popular qualities in his pictures disguised his shortcomings as a painter. He was a thorough master in the art of making a picture according to the acknowledged understanding in modern schools and academies of what a picture ought to be, a thorough master in the art of massing light and shade effectively and designing lines pleasantly, melting shadows and light into one another, in fact, in all those elements of art which, thirty or forty years ago, were of all elements honoared as most artistic, and which were easily repeated with success by the engravers. But in a few of his works there is a quality which detaches them from those of ordinary, popular merit, and places them, not- withstanding their artistic shortcomings, high among works of genius, namely, a fervour of feeling and an imaginative grasp of true sentiment which leaves those who study his work as a whole astounded at the inequality in its merits. It is the great inequality, not so much in the performance as in the intention of the work, which excites a curiosity to analyse the character and life of the artist. It is marvellous that the same artist should have felt, thought, and painted such a tender, pathetic poem as " The Shepherd's Chief Mourner," and be content to spend elaborate labour on such paintings as " Comical Dogs," "The Monkey who has Seen the World " (good enough subjects for a quick drawing or a pen-and-ink sketch for Punch) ; or worse than these, on certain well-known portrait groups of "distinguished persons ;" or, worst of all, on such a picture as " Lady Godiva!"

" The Shepherd's Chief Mourner " inspired the well-known de- scription by Mr. Ruskin which the author of this Life of Sir E. Landseer quotes, and which, as it can scarcely be too often quoted, we repeat, though we do not wholly agree in the praise given to the artistic merit of the painting. We do not think the quality of the painting good, though the draughtsmanship displayed in the drawing of the expression of the dog is beyond

praise. Mr. Ruskin says— "Take, for instance, one of the most perfect poems or pictures (I use the words as synonymous) which modern times have seen—' The Highland Shepherd's Chief Mourner.' Here the exquisite execution of the crisp and glossy hair of the dog ; the bright, sharp touch of the green bough beside it ; the clear painting of the wood of the coffin, and the folds of the blanket, are language, language clear and expressive in the highest degree. But the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood ; the convulsive clinging of the paw which has dragged the blanket off the trestle ; the total powerlessness of the head, laid, close and motionless, upon its folds ; the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness ; the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-lid; the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life, how nnwatched the departure of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep ;—these are all thoughts—thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author not as a neat imitator of the texture of a skin or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind."

With such thoughts, with such engrossing labour as his art, would not Landseer have been better off without "the best

society ?" Was it not this which distracted his mind from the reality of its pathos, which intruded, into the scenes of rural life

painted by him, an artificiality which is repugnant, and which wasted too much of his better mind, and led him to portray the pursuits of the pleasure-living classes—to paint, for instance, dead game, instead of live animals—and which

produced an inequality in his work, the result of a nature at variance with itself ? Was that distinction of soul with-

out which the highest in Art cannot be sustained, fostered, or smothered by a life in that "best society" and that aim for popularity ? We should answer, judging from the study of Landseer's life, and by watching the careers of living artists, that there is sufficient proof that such influences are not those which feed that higher distinction of nature which, when sustained through all the efforts of study, creeps into every line and touch of colour of a Giotto, a Raphael, a Titian, or a Turner.

Such distinction, though present now and then in the senti- ment of Landseer's work, never creeps into his painting, and an element of it is also wanting in his draughtsmanship. The form is only superficially structural, nature is suggested by the surface alone even in the drawing of his animals, much more so in his drawing of the human figure. The power which bone and tendon give to the appearance of the surface is wanting even in his better work. But it is perhaps in the bronze lions in Trafalgar Square that the want of distinction in the artistic treatment is most obvious. There is in these an utter absence of that fine sense which would discriminate what qualities could be rendered effectively and nobly in bronze. Compare, for instance, the treatment of these lions, half sketchy, half realis- tic, with that of the great equestrian bronze statue in Venice.

Had we not had glimpses of such distinction in a few of Landseer's works, we might have enjoyed more cordially such cleverness as we find in pictures of the class of " Jack in Office " and " Dignity and Impudence;" but when we look at such work as "The Shepherd's Chief Mourner," or "Man proposes, God disposes," we feel there was the element of a better great- ness than cleverness or popularity in the artist, an element

which was not sustained by the worthiest aims in art, and which, had it been done justice to, would, we think, have cleared away from his work all Landseer's shortcomings as a painter and designer.

The most popular element in his drawing of animals is not the one which those, we think, who care most for animals would

admire. His habit of endowing dogs with human expression is a travesty of the dog-nature which might be well enough in a caricature, but is not satisfactory in a serious work of art. That such a travesty was done with consummate cleverness by Landseer is unquestionable, but that it was wise to do it at all in so complete a work as an oil-painting is very questionable. The book before ns contains a series of illustrations from etch- ings by Landseer and C. G. Lewis, from drawings by Landseer, which are admirable, and viewing this volume simply in the light of a catalogue of Landseer's works and of the facts of his life, it is certainly completely and carefully compiled ; but that a much fuller and more intimate description of the man would have been instructive and interesting is not less certain,—and we conclude, as we began, by regretting the absence of such a study.