Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, R.A. 1802-1873

Painted for Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Bt. (1788-1850), the sitter's father;Sir Robert Peel, 3rd Bt., his son;
H.L. Bischoffsheim by 1901, his sale, Christie's, 7th May 1926, lot 54, bt. Sampson for a private collector;
by descent until bequeathed to the present owner

Royal Academy, 1839, no.255;
Royal Academy, Winter Exhibition, The Works of the Late Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., 1874, no.415;
Grafton Gallery, Fair Children, 1895, no.63;
Whitechapel Gallery, Spring Exhibition, 1901, no.36;
Whitechapel Gallery, 1907, no.77

Dr Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 1854, Vol.I, p.414;
A. Graves, Catalogue of the Works of Sir Edwin Landseer, 1876, p.22, no.266;
C.S. Mann, catalogue for the 1874 Royal Academy exhibition in four volumes, interleaved, 1874-7, Victoria and Albert Museum Library, Eng. M.S.86 BB.19, Vol.I, p.124;

James A. Manson, Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., 1902, p.20;

W.M. Thackeray,  Essays, Reviews, 1906, p.130;

The Private Letters of Sir Robert Peel, edited by George Peel, 1920, illus. of the print opp. p.234;

Campbell Lennie, Landseer, The Victorian Paragon, 1976, pp.59, 165

This charming portrait was begun by Landseer in 1838 and exhibited the next year at the Royal Academy. The sitter was the six year old Eliza Peel, daughter of Sir Robert Peel (fig.1), the Prime Minister. Landseer however chose to paint her, not as the daughter of a celebrated statesman, but as a country girl with bare feet and a simple costume in the manner of many of Gainsborough's late fancy pictures of 'cottage children'. She is depicted holding her favourite spaniel at the edge of a sunken bath - sponges, brushes and a mirror are close at hand and one assumes that the dog is about to be plunged into the water.

From early on in his career, Landseer had shown his ability to paint sympathetic portraits of children. Notable amongst these were the charming portraits of the two sons of his first great patron John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, painted for their father in 1824, and the study of the young George Murray in the famous Death of the Stag in Glen Tilt, painted for the Duke of Atholl. However in the late 1830s his portraits of children became more formally composed, on the scale of life, and showed a debt to his great predecessors Reynolds and Lawrence. In 1836 he exhibited, at the Royal Academy, a portrait of the children of the Marquess of Abercorn, another of his important aristocratic patrons, showing them with a bloodhound and a puppy. In 1838 he painted another beautiful portrait of children, for the 2nd Duke of Sutherland. It shows the young Marquess of Stafford and his sister Lady Evelyn Gower in the grounds of Dunrobin Castle, the young girl decorating her favourite fawn with a garland of columbine, watched by their favourite dogs. In 1839, the same year that he exhibited this portrait of Eliza Peel, he also exhibited two other full length portraits of children, the children of the Hon. Colonel Seymour Bathurst with their pet rabbits (private collection), and the young Princess Mary of Cambridge with a Newfoundland dog (Royal Collection). In all these portraits Landseer was able to combine his powers as the finest animal painter in Britain with his ability to capture the innocence and vivacity of young children.

Whilst it is not certain how Landseer came into contact with Sir Robert Peel, it seems likely that he met him through the good offices of the Duke of Wellington. Peel had already commissioned a portrait of his elder daughter Julia with her pet spaniel from Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1826 (private collection), and Landseer's portrait of Eliza was clearly conceived as a companion piece. The picture was begun in 1838 and in a letter of 22nd June to Peel, Landseer asked for the spaniel to be sent to his studio by 10.30 the next day. He added that he expected