Sir Edwin Landseer

Keith Graham's Country View

Jul 29 2011 by Jean Pedder, Stirling Observer Friday

HE is a monarch but not it seems, of the glen. In most people’s minds, red deer are synonymous with our mountains and glens but this monarch, along with a substantial gathering of fellow stags, is instead, resident in a forest at little more than sea level.

And it is from the dark recesses of this forest that from time to time, together with his gang of would be fellow monarchs, he emerges to take advantage of the surrounding fields of nourishing grass and crops. Not for them therefore, a battle with the considerably more hostile elements of those Highland braes and glens, when winter’s pall descends.

The forest was planted many a year ago. I would contend that it shouldn’t have been planted at all, not here at least.

The low-lying ground upon which it was planted was in essence bog, a rich wildlife environment of fascinating plants and intriguing bird and animal life.

Indeed I was extremely familiar with the last section of it to be planted, a few wild, boggy acres in which I frequently watched barn owls flitting through the dusk and short eared owls by daytime, flying low over the tussocky terrain in their constant search for voles.

There were present too I remember, drumming snipe performing their age old rituals, rising high into a midge filled sky before descending steeply to produce that strange whirring or drumming pronouncement of territorial integrity, often called “heather bleating”.

It is a curious sound, not produced vocally. Instead it comes from the vibration of two of the bird’s outer tail feathers, which are extended and, as the bird dives at they say, an angle of 45 degrees (could the required angle be quite so precise)? vibrate to make this strange drumming noise.

All sorts of other birds nested in those rough acres, oyster catchers, redshank, lapwing, curlew, all manner of ground nesters.

Larks would spring from the tussocks to fill the air with their magnificent anthems; from the reed filled ditches would emanate the songs of reed and sedge warblers. It was in short a little unofficial Nature Reserve of intriguing charm and variety.

Then one day, the ploughs moved in and carved it up. In due course, it was filled by serried ranks of spruces which it might be said took something of a battering from the local roe deer once they had discovered so much succulent browsing there.

Lion: A Newfoundland Dog by Sir Edwin Landseer « Retrieverman's Weblog

Painted by Landseer in 1824:

Please compare this dog with what I strongly feel is a Newfoundland dog in an 1837 painting by William Barraud.

These dogs are very similar in head shape, tail carriage, and body structure. If one accepts that the dog and horse are based upon real life proportions, the only real difference between Lion and Barraud’s Newfoundland is that Barraud’s has Irish markings.

I did not make a big assumption with that previous post.

I based it upon what I knew Newfoundland dogs in England looked like in the early part of the nineteenth century. I also included what has generally been accepted about the class divide in dogs. Dogs that were of the working class– including those that evolved into our collie breeds– were not widely kept by the nobility. They may have bred collie-types to their setters and retrievers, but they didn’t normally keep them at their estates.

Newfoundlands were once all the rage. They were the first breed to become extremely popular as pets in both Europe and North America. They were widely touted for their high intelligence and docility, traits for which their retriever cousins and descendants would later be greatly celebrated.

Eventually, solid-colored Newfoundlands became more popular, but those who bred the black and white ones called theirs “Landseers” for the man who painted many of them. In Europe, the Landseer is a different breed, but in the English-speaking countries, it is still a color variety of Newfoundland.

I do not make facts up, especially in the area of breed history.

while I agree that the other picture isn’t a collie and is more “newf” than anything else, it is a much more leggy dog than the one shown above. Were there particularly “leggy” Newfs? (leggy meaning as tall as the dog is long and with as much leg as body depth).

I’ll note that Belgians are one of the few “leggy” herding breeds, and not all of them are leggy.

Peggy Richter.

Sir Edwin Landseer

Sir Edwin Landseer

Sir Edwin Landseer

Sir Edwin Landseer

Sir Edwin Landseer