There were some complaints about their ‘sphinx-like’ resemblance (the paws were modelled on those of a cat) and one individual was arrested for flinging stones at them. A poet in the neighbourhood has already begun a poem, entitled A dawning of a Roarer.’ĭays later, Landseer was present at an informal unveiling of the colossal statues-20ft long, 11ft high and weighing seven tons. The inhabitants are gradually regaining their composure. By the end of January 1867, with all four lions about to be revealed, Punch greeted the sighting of the first by impudently declaring that: ‘The first lion intended for the Nelson Monument has broken from its distinguished keeper, Sir Edwin Landseer, and is now at large - in fact, very large - in Trafalgar Square. Mansonįinally, four bronze casts were made at the end of 1866 by Baron Carlo Marochetti, the sculptor in whose studio the artist worked on the project. ‘By the nobility of the treatment and the majesty of the pose… it was freely confessed that Pillar and Lions together formed the most magnificent monument in the metropolis’ - Landseer biographer James A. A painting of about 1865 by John Ballantyne (now in the National Portrait Gallery) shows Landseer at work on a spectacular clay model of a lion. Ultimately, the commission required the lions to be couchant, not standing or prowling, thus more reflective of Nelson’s dignified heroism. One idea was for them to be standing, mouths wide open, apparently roaring. He was still making studies of lions in London Zoo as late as 1862, the process being complicated by confusion over the sculpted lions’ aspect. He suffered from breakdowns and depression and often left commissions unfinished. Although he was a Society figure, Landseer’s mental disposition was unstable. However, creating the Trafalgar Square lions proved a lengthy process, so protracted that it attracted press ridicule. From it arose the fine study The Old Lion, Nero.
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The visitors were somewhat alarmed when the gathering was interrupted by a manservant who, with Jeevesian imperturbability, entered the room to ask of his master: ‘Did you order a lion, sir?’ They were relieved to learn that an elderly lion had died at the Zoological Gardens in nearby Regent’s Park and it was clearly a natural response to place it in a cart and drive it to the artist’s gates. Stephens’s 1880 biography recounts an evening when friends assembled in Landseer’s home in St John’s Wood, London. ‘The lions in Trafalgar Square are for me the centre of London… the only monument in this vast capital worthy of a second visit… Did such a work exist now in Venice, what immense folios would be issued about it!’ - Richard Jefferies in ‘The Toilers of the Field’ (1892)įrederic G.
He had visited the Tower of London menagerie, dissected the big cats, sketched and painted them. He was a favourite in Society’s upper circles and his works had mass appeal. However, he was the age’s foremost animal artist, renowned for his painstaking approach to anatomical detail. Landseer was, after all, a painter, not a sculptor. The commission, when it arrived in 1858, was controversial. Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners.
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