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Edwin Landseer , English, 1802-1873

Title

A Lion at the Zoo

Datec.1865

MediumCharcoal with white highlights on brown paper

Dimensions

134.5 x 183.3 cm

Credit LinePurchased, 1884

Object numberNGI.2173

DescriptionLandseer is best known for his paintings of animals. He gave his animals anthropomorphic qualities, and usually presented them within a naturalistic or dramatic narrative context that revealed their personalities. The noble steed, the faithful hunting dog or the mischievous monkey, were typical actors in his paintings. Landseer's work was highly popular with the public and commanded high prices among collectors, namely Queen Victoria, who commissioned from him a large numbers of paintings, mostly genre scenes and portraits of the royal family and their pets. However, Landseer's career has a meteoric rise and fall, and he succumbed to mental illness and alcoholism in 1873. The famous statues of four lions in Trafalgar Square, surrounding Nelson's Column, are commonly known as the ‘Landseer Lions’. The artist had been asked to design the lions in 1858. Landseer had in fact already made a series of paintings of lions, but was not a sculptor, but accepted the commission. He worked slowly, and four years on, was still sketching them; in the words of the Art Journal, he: ‘was now very accurately studying the habits of lions, and was to be seen in the Zoological Gardens making himself thoroughly acquainted with their attitudes’.