Stag For Sale: Landseer's Scene In Braemar
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What is the significance of Sir Edwin Landseer's 'Scene in Braemar'?
What you are listening to is the roar of a red stag, a big red stag during the rutting season in the Highlands in Scotland. Why are we playing this? Well, a rather special piece of art is coming up for auction. In London this week, Sir Edwin Lancier's Scene in Braemar. A huge, near nine-foot painting that hasn't been seen in public, we're told, for over 20 years. It goes under the hammer at Sotheby's Old Masters Evening Sale on July 1st. So, if you have a spare million tucked away behind the couch or under the mattress, you might just fancy investing in a masterpiece. And it really is dramatic stuff. At the centre, there's this massive highland stag standing on a rocky peak, roaring into the mist as if it's challenging something we can't even see.
And it's surrounded by hinds, a mountain hare and even an eagle overhead. And in this case, it's almost certainly a highland red deer. The very animal lance here had turned into a symbol of Scotland. If you've ever been to Scotland, you've probably seen a replication of the image of one of his most famous paintings, The Monarch of the Glen, which features another stag. And you see it replicated on whiskey bottles, on biscuit tins, on table mats. Everywhere you go, if you go to the Highlands, you see this. At any rate, we're going to find out about Scene in Braemar now by saying hello to Julian Gascoyne, who's a senior specialist in British paintings at Sotheby's in London. Hello, Julian. How are you?
Good evening, Derek. Very well, thank you.
Well, it's great to speak to you. So tell us a little bit about the auction.
So the auction is coming up on Wednesday evening. And one of the highlights is this fantastic painting by Sir Edwin Landseer, which has been tucked away in a private collection for most of its life. but is really one of the sort of epic achievements of his career. And it's extremely exciting to have it.
So before we get into talking more about the painting, can you tell me about Landseer himself? Who was he? Why was he so important?
Well, so Landseer is really the most important animal painter of the 19th century. He's sort of to the 19th century what George Stubbs was to the 18th. He was a child prodigy who, from a very, very early age, was able to produce images of animals that were incredibly anatomically accurate, but conveyed a sense of the animal's nature and movement extremely forcefully. He had an extremely successful commercial career as an artist. He was beloved of Victorian society. He was Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's favourite artist, and as a result, he's very, very well represented in the Royal Collection, as well as across most of our major cultural institutions in this country.
And he seemed to have a penchant for stags in his paintings, didn't he?
He did, absolutely. Well, he goes to Scotland in the 1820s, when he himself is still a young artist in his early 20s, and really falls in love with the Highlands of Scotland in particular, with its landscape and with its people, with its culture, and spends a lot of time there. He basically returns every summer for several months, walking and hunting in the Highlands and really immersing himself in the culture and this picture is one of a series of paintings that dominate from the last decade of his life and to many are the sort of high point of his career and In this decade, he really focuses in on the image of the heroic stag as a sort of symbol of the majesty and romance and drama of Scotland.
And he uses the stag kind of as a vehicle to express all those emotions that he's trying to convey of the Highland and the Highland way of life and the ethos of it all.
Now, I had never actually seen this painting until I saw the press release from Sotheby's. But I have seen the Monarch of the Glen. It's probably his most famous painting. Is it fair to say that? Anyway, that's also of a stag. And I'm just wondering if this is a sister painting to the Monarch of the Glen.
Well, absolutely. So Monarch of the Glen is, as you say, it's probably Lance's most famous painting and is an icon, not only of British art, but of sort of Scottish culture the world over.
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