Sir Edwin Henry Landseer RA (7 March 1802 – 1 October 1873) was an English painter and sculptor,[1] well known for his paintings of animals – particularly horses, dogs, and stags.

He studied under several artists, including his father, and the history painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who encouraged the young Landseer to perform dissections in order to fully understand animal musculature and skeletal structure.

[4] He was an acquaintance of Charles Robert Leslie, who described him as "a curly-headed youngster, dividing his time between Polito's wild beasts at Exeter Change and the Royal Academy Schools."

In his late thirties Landseer suffered what is now believed to be a substantial nervous breakdown, and for the rest of his life was troubled by recurring bouts of melancholy, hypochondria, and depression, often aggravated by alcohol and drug use.

Landseer was a notable figure in 19th-century British art, and his works can be found in Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kenwood House and the Wallace Collection in London.

[7] One of his earliest paintings is credited as the origin of the myth that St. Bernard rescue dogs in the Alps carry a small casket of brandy on their collars.

[14] The paintings included his early successes The Hunting of Chevy Chase (1825–26), An Illicit Whisky Still in the Highlands (1826–1829) and his more mature achievements, such as the majestic stag study The Monarch of the Glen (1851) and Rent Day in the Wilderness (1855–1868).

The catalogue explained it as a portrait of a noted equestrienne, Ann Gilbert, applying the taming techniques of the famous 'horse whisperer' John Solomon Rarey.

[17] Critics were troubled by the depiction of a languorous woman dominating a powerful animal and some concluded Landseer was implying the famous courtesan Catherine Walters, then at the height of her fame.

[20] In 1858 the government commissioned Landseer to make four gold lions for the base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, following the rejection of a set in stone by Thomas Milnes.

Landseer accepted on condition that he would not have to start work for another nine months, and there was a further delay when he asked to be supplied with copies of casts of a real lion he knew were in the possession of the academy at Turin.

[21] Landseer's death on 1 October 1873 was widely marked in England: shops and houses lowered their blinds, flags flew at half mast, his bronze lions at the base of Nelson's column were hung with wreaths, and large crowds lined the streets to watch his funeral cortege pass.