“Attachment”
Sir Edwin Henry
Landseer (1829)
© J W. Durham 2009
 Attachment (Sir
Edwin Landseer,
1829)
To the painting Attachment, exhibited
first by Sir Edwin Landseer in 1829,
belongs the honor of being the first known
work of art to require an armed guard. The
guard was provided because the work was
so wildly popular, with so many people trying
simply to touch it or crowd around for a
better look, that it was necessary to provide
restraints.
The painting commemorates an
incident reported first in 1805. The story is
that a “young shepherd”, Charles
Gough, was killed by a terrible fall while tending his flock in the Scottish Highlands. His body
was only found several weeks later, still guarded by his faithful dog. The dog refused to leave
her master’s body. Reports of the incident had a powerful effect throughout Great Britain;
poems were written by Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth.
In reality Charles Gough really did die from such a fall, although his profession was that of
artist, not shepherd. The dog’s name was “Foxie”. She seems to have done more or less as
the legend says. Landseer did not know Gough, although he grew up almost certainly
knowing the poems by Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth (see below) that
memorialize Gough.
From a technical viewpoint this is only a mildly interesting picture, although Landseer’s
occasional ventures in to something that would eventually become Impressionism are evident.
The coloration is mostly dark, but a special, almost supernatural light falls on the shepherd
and on the dog. It is significant that the light is roughly equal upon each – in fact, this special
lighting is perhaps the most important aspect of the painting. The message is simple and plain:
man and animal are equal in both life and death.
Landseer (1802 – 1873) painted a great number of works during his life, most of them
featuring animals, particularly dogs. It is usually thought that the popularity of his paintings is
merely a reflection of the British love of animals, but when one looks at writings and other
evidence from the years before Landseer’s work, there is no special evidence that suggests
such popularity. Before Landseer, animals seem to have been regarded in much the same
way all over Europe. Along with figures such as Anna Sewell (1820 – 1878, the author of Black Beauty), Landseer was one of the most powerful forces that shaped the rise of the
humane movement, which was at first a distinctly British phenomenon. (It soon spread to
America and other English-speaking lands, then to Scandinavia and the rest of Europe by the
end of the Nineteenth Century.)
In other words, Landseer and Sewell, along with many others, created the British love of
animals.
Landseer was much admired by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and produced a
significant number of works for them; he was undoubtedly the most popular British painter of
the Victorian era. Nearer to our times, with the triumph of new styles and the blizzard of a
certain pseudo-Marxist rhetoric that decried “bourgeois sentimentality”, Landseer’s work fell
into disrepute. At one point, about 1960, it was possible to buy his paintings for a few
pounds each. His reputation revived after the 1960’s, although it fell again in the 1990’s and
afterwards.
Compared to artists such as John Constable and Joseph M. W. Turner (his older
contemporaries) or Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Sir John Everett Millais (his younger
contemporaries), Landseer is a plodding and unimpressive figure, at least so far as concerns
his technical mastery. On the other hand, no British painter in the 1800’s – and perhaps no
painter at any time, in any country – had such a powerful and benevolent influence on popular
opinion. It is in great part thanks to Landseer and Sewell that people began to see animals as
important, as possessing the gift of life, as having their own thoughts and feelings. Even so,
and even today, there are still those that follow the dogma attributed to René Descartes, that
animals are mere mechanisms and have no souls. Not coincidentally, these are the same
people that sneer at Landseer’s paintings.
But without Landseer, who, more than any other individual, started it all, an important step –
perhaps the most important step – in the progress of civilization would never have been taken
, or at least would have been taken hesitantly, and some suffering, some sorrow, some
loneliness would never have been prevented.
Helvellyn
(Sir Walter Scott, c 1810)
I climd’d the dark brow of mighty Helvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleam’d misty and wide;
All was still, save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,
And starting around me the echoes replied.
On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was bending
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I mark’d the sad spot where the wanderer had died.
Dark green was that spot ’mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretch’d in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandon’d to weather,
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended,
The much-loved remains of her master defended,
And chased the hill-fox and raven away.
How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber?
When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?
How many long days and long weeks didst thou number,
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?
And, oh, was it meet, that – no requiem read o’er him –
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,
And thou, little guardian, alone stretch’d before him –
Unhonour’d the Pilgrim from life should depart?
When a Prince to the fate of the Peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark round the rim-lighted hall;
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,
And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:
Through the court, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming;
In proudly-arch’d chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a Chief of the people should fall.
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb,
When, wilder’d, he drops from some huge cliff in stature,
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.
And more stately thy couch by the desert lake lying,
Thy obsequies sung by the grave plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchedicam.
Fidelity
(William Wordsworth, c. 1812)
A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
A cry as of a Dog or Fox;
He halts, and searches with his eyes
Among the scatter’d rocks:
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake of fern;
From which immediately leaps out
A Dog, and yelping runs about.
The Dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the Shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry:
Nor is there any one in sight
All round, in Hollow or on Height;
Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;
What is the Creature doing here?
It was a Cove, a huge Recess,
That keeps till June December’s snow;
A lofty Precipice in front,
A silent Tarn below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public Road or Dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land;
From trace of human foot or hand.
There, sometimes does a leaping Fish
Send through the Tarn a lonely cheer;
The Crags repeat the Raven’s croak,
In symphony austere;
Thither the Rainbow comes, the Cloud;
And Mists that spread the flying shroud;
And Sun-beams; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past,
But that enormous Barrier binds it fast.
Not knowing what to think, a while
The Shepherd stood: then makes his way
Towards the Dog, o’er rocks and stones,
As quickly as he may;
Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground,
Sad sight! the Shepherd with a sigh
Looks round, to learn the history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks,
The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the Shepherd’s mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recall’d the Name,
And who he was, and whence he came;
Remember’d, too, the very day
On which the Traveller pass’d this way.
But hear a wonder now, for sake
Of which this mournful Tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,
This Dog had been through three months’ space
A Dweller in that savage place.
Yes, proof was plain that since the day
On which the Traveller thus had died
The Dog had watch’d about the spot,
Or by his Master’s side:
How nourish’d here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime,
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate.
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