Edwin Landseer

Most Britons can identify Sir Edwin Henry Landseer's most famous work, the lions at Trafalgar Square, even though the average person may not attribute them to him. Landseer (1802-1873) remains one of the best known British artists and animaliers over one hundred and thirty years after his death. Among his more easily-identified works is the stag portrait Monarch of the Glen. Landseer also gave his name to a breed of dog, the Landseer, a type of Newfoundland, and to [[ , son of his good friends . His brother, Charles was also a painter; a third brother, Thomas, was an engraver, who distributed copies of many of Edwin's works. All three brothers studied first with their father, a writer and engraver, then under Benjamin Robert Hayden, a well-known historical painter, and finally at the Royal Academy.

Landseer was prolific, and indisputably gifted in several media: painting, drawing and sculpting. He exhibited frequently and his work was and remains widely reproduced. Opinions vary as to the quality of his later work; while some appreciate what they see as its moral and evocative qualities, others feel it is excessively sentimental and anthropomorphic, lacking the realism of his earlier creations; some even feel his work was "marred" by this .