(Melbourne). Prussia—Oberneck, Die Preussischen Grundbuchgesetze
(Berlin). Austria—Das allgemeine Grundbuchsgesetz, &c.
(Vienna); Bartsch, Das Oesterreichische allgemeine Grundbuchsgesetz
in seiner practischen Anwendung (Vienna). Saxony—Siegmann,
Sächsische Hypothekenrecht (Leipzig). Statistics—Oesterreichische
Statistik (Grundbuchs-ämter) (Vienna, annually). (C. F.-Br.)
LANDSBERG AM LECH, a town in the kingdom of Bavaria,
on the river Lech, 38 m. by rail W. by S. of Munich. Pop. (1905)
6505. It has eight Roman Catholic churches, among them the
Liebfrauen Kirche dating from 1498, several monasteries, and a
fine medieval town-hall, with frescoes by Karl von Piloty and
a painting by Hubert von Herkomer. Here also are a fine
gateway, the Bayer-Tor, an agricultural and other schools.
Brewing, tanning and the manufacture of agricultural machinery
are among the principal industries.
See Schober, Landsberg am Lech und Umgebung (1902); and Zwerger, Geschichte Landsbergs (1889).
LANDSBERG-AN-DER-WARTHE, a town in the Prussian
province of Brandenburg, at the confluence of the Warthe and
the Kladow, 80 m. N.E. of Berlin by rail. Pop. (1905) 36,934.
It has important engine and boiler works and iron-foundries;
there are also manufactures of tobacco, cloth, carriages, wools,
spirits, jute products and leather. An active trade is carried on
in wood, cattle and the produce of the surrounding country.
Landsberg obtained civic privileges in 1257, and later was
besieged by the Poles and then by the Hussites.
See R. Eckert, Geschichte von Landsberg-Warthe (1890).
LANDSBERG BEI HALLE, a town in Prussia on the Strengbach,
on the railway from Berlin to Weissenfels. Pop. (1905)
1770. Its industries include quarrying and malting, and the
manufacture of sugar and machinery. Landsberg was the
capital of a small margraviate of this name, ruled in the 12th
century by a certain Dietrich, who built the town. Later it
belonged to Meissen and to Saxony, passing to Prussia in 1814.
LANDSEER, SIR EDWIN HENRY (1802–1873), English
painter, third son of John Landseer, A.R.A., a well-known
engraver and writer on art, was born at 71 Queen Anne Street
East (afterwards 33 Foley Street), London, on March 7th 1802.
His mother was Miss Potts, who sat to Sir Joshua Reynolds
as the reaper with a sheaf of corn on her head, in “Macklin’s
Family Picture,” or “The Gleaners.”[1] Edwin Henry Landseer
began his artistic education under his father so successfully
that in his fifth year he drew fairly well, and was familiar with
animal character and passion. Drawings of his, at South
Kensington, dated by his father, attest that he drew excellently
at eight years of age; at ten he was an admirable draughtsman
and his work shows considerable sense of humour. At thirteen
he drew a majestic St Bernard dog so finely that his brother
Thomas engraved and published the work. At this date (1815)
he sent two pictures to the Royal Academy, and was described
in the catalogue as “Master E. Landseer, 33 Foley Street.”
Youth forbade his being reckoned among practising artists,
and caused him to be considered as the “Honorary Exhibitor”
of “No. 443, Portrait of a Mule,” and “No. 584, Portraits
of a Pointer Bitch and Puppy.” Adopting the advice of B. R.
Haydon, he studied the Elgin Marbles, the animals in the Tower
of London and Exeter ‘Change, and dissected every animal
whose carcass he could obtain. In 1816 Landseer was admitted
a student of the Royal Academy schools. In 1817 he sent to the
Academy a portrait of “Old Brutus,” a much-favoured dog,
which, as well as its son, another Brutus, often appeared in his
later pictures. Even at this date Landseer enjoyed considerable
reputation, and had more work than he could readily perform,
his renown having been zealously fostered by his father in James
Elmes’s Annals of the Fine Arts. At the Academy he was a
diligent student and a favourite of Henry Fuseli’s, who would
look about the crowded antique school and ask, “Where is my
curly-headed dog-boy?” Although his pictures sold easily
from the first, the prices he received at this time were comparatively
small. In 1818 Landseer sent to the Society of Painters
in Oil and Water Colours, which then held its exhibitions in
Spring Gardens, his picture of “Fighting Dogs getting Wind.”
The sale of this work to Sir George Beaumont vastly enhanced
the fame of the painter, who soon became “the fashion.” This
picture illustrates the prime strength of Landseer’s earlier style.
Unlike the productions of his later life, it displays not an iota
of sentiment. Perfectly drawn, solidly and minutely finished,
and carefully composed, its execution attested the skill acquired
during ten years’ studies from nature. Between 1818 and 1825
Landseer did a great deal of work, but on the whole gained
little besides facility of technical expression, a greater zest for
humour and a larger style. The work of this stage ended with
the production of the painting called “The Cat’s Paw,” which
was sent to the British Institution in 1824, and made an enormous
sensation. The price obtained for this picture, £100, enabled
Landseer to set up for himself in the house No. 1 St John’s Wood
Road, where he lived nearly fifty years and in which he died.
During this period Landseer’s principal pictures were “The Cat
Disturbed”; “Alpine Mastiffs reanimating a Distressed
Traveller,” a famous work engraved by his father; “The
Ratcatchers”; “Pointers to be”; “The Larder Invaded”;
and “Neptune,” the head and shoulders of a Newfoundland dog.
In 1824 Landseer and C. R. Leslie made a journey to the Highlands—a
momentous visit for the former, who thenceforward
rarely failed annually to repeat it in search of studies and subjects.
In 1826 Landseer was elected an A.R.A. In 1827 appeared “The Monkey who has seen the World,” a picture which marked the growth of a taste for humorous subjects in the mind of the painter that had been evoked by the success of the “Cat’s Paw.” “Taking a Buck” (1825) was the painter’s first Scottish picture. Its execution marked a change in his style which, in increase of largeness, was a great improvement. In other respects, however, there was a decrease of solid qualities; indeed, finish, searching modelling, and elaborate draughtsmanship rarely appeared in Landseer’s work after 1823. The subject, as such, soon after this time became a very distinct element in his pictures; ultimately it dominated, and in effect the artist enjoyed a greater degree of popularity than technical judgment justified, so that later criticism has put Landseer’s position in art much lower than the place he once occupied. Sentiment gave new charm to his works, which had previously depended on the expression of animal passion and character, and the exhibition of noble qualities of draughtsmanship. Sentimentality ruled in not a few pictures of later dates, and quasi-human humour, or pathos, superseded that masculine animalism which rioted in its energy, and enabled the artist to rival Snyders, if not Velazquez, as a painter of beasts. After “High Life” and “Low Life,” now in the Tate Gallery, London, Landseer’s dogs, and even his lions and birds, were sometimes more than half civilized. It was not that these later pictures were less true to nature than their forerunners, but the models were chosen from different grades of animal society. As Landseer prospered he kept finer company, and his new patrons did not care about rat-catching and dog-fighting, however vigorously and learnedly those subjects might be depicted. It cannot be said that the world lost much when, in exchange for the “Cat Disturbed” and “Fighting Dogs getting Wind,” came “Jack in Office,” “The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,” and “The Swannery invaded by Eagles,” three pictures which are types of as many diverse moods of Landseer’s art, and each a noble one.
Landseer was elected a Royal Academician in 1831. “Chevy Chase” (1826), which is at Woburn, “The Highland Whisky Still” (1829), “High Life” (1829) and “Low Life” (1829), besides other important works, had appeared in the interval. Landseer had by this time attained such amazing mastery that he painted “Spaniel and Rabbit” in two hours and a half, and “Rabbits,” which was at the British Institution, in three-quarters of an hour; and the fine dog-picture “Odin” (1836)
- ↑ John Landseer died February 29, 1852, aged ninety-one (or eighty-three, according to Cosmo Monkhouse). Sir Edwin’s eldest brother Thomas, an A.R.A. and a famous engraver, whose interpretations of his junior’s pictures have made them known throughout the world, was born in 1795, and died January 20, 1880. Charles Landseer, R.A., and Keeper of the Royal Academy, the second brother, was born in 1799, and died July 22, 1879. John Landseer’s brother Henry was a painter of some reputation, who emigrated to Australia.
