THE LANDSWOMAN
December, I 918
of animals. He was commissioned by the King (George IV.)
to "paint portraits of the giraffe and three gnus which were in
the Royal ~Ienage rie, under Cross's management, in Windsor
Park. This giraffe was the first to be seen alive in England, and
had been sent as a present to the King from the Pasha of Egypt.
But Agasse did uot paint only wild animals. He exr,elled in the
painting of horses, dogs, and sporting subjects, and has left
besides many charming portraits and scenes of child-life. He
showed the same sympathy in painting children as in painting
animals, and this sympathy has enabled him to present his
models in perfectly natural attitudes. As an animal painter be
was un.•urpassed, and Landseer himself said of him, "He paints
animals as none of us can."
Landseer was a competent judge. As a boy of seven he had
himself made studies at Exeter 'Change of the same lions and
leopards that served Agasse as models, and he subsequently
became the most popular painter of animaL• that we have bad
In England. There must be few people who do not know his
"Dignity and Impudence" in the National Gallery, the huge
bloodhound and the little Scotch terrier side by side in the kennel,
or his noble stag, "The Monarch of the Glen," so frequently
reproduced. Queen Victoria was always a great admirer of
Edwin Landseer's work, and he was knighted by her in 1850.
"Elephant and Tiger."
The "Lion" which we reproduce is one of two studies which
he made at the Zoological Gardens to help him in modelling the
four great lions for the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square.
These lions were finished and placed in position at the base of the
Column at the beginning of 1S67. Landseer had taken eight
years over them, but he did every bit of the modelling without
assistance, in spite of the fact that he was a painter and not a
sculptor. They were then cast in metal by Baron Marochetti.
Each lion is twenty feet long and eleven feet high, and weighs
seven t, and from the top
Raw the world st.retcht out-corn lands and !crest,
the 1·iver winding among meadow-flats, and right
off, like a hem of the sky, the moving sea, with
Bnatches of foam, alld largP ships reachin~ forward,
outbound. And then I thought no mNe, b"t my
heart leapt t.o meet the wind, aod I ran, and l ran.
1 fpJt my JE'gs undPr me, I felt the wind bullet me,
hit me on the Pheek: the sun shone, 1he bees swPpt
past me singing; and I too sang, shouted, '' Worlrl,
world, I am comintz! "-M.~uRICE HEWLETT (Pan
and the Young She71heri).