艾德文·亨利·蘭希爾爵士，R.A.

The artist's studio sale, London, Christie's, 8 May 1874, lot 119, for 250 guineas to Agnews, on behalf of;
Charles William Mansel Lewis (1845–1931), Stradey Castle, Llanelly, Carmarthenshire;
Thence by descent.

London, Royal Academy, The Works of the Late Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., Winter 1874, no. 166;
London, Royal Academy, Paintings and Drawings by Sir Edwin Landseer R.A. 1802–1873, Winter 1961, no. 127;
Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery, Landseer and his World, 5 February – 12 March 1972, no. 23;
Philadelphia, Museum of Art, Sir Edwin Landseer, 25 October 1981 – 3 January 1982, no. 25; 
London, Tate Gallery, Sir Edwin Landseer, 10 February – 12 April 1982, no. 25;
Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands, 14 April – 10 July 2005, no. 14.

A. Graves, Catalogue of the Works of the late Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., London 1875, p. 11;
R. Ormond, Sir Edwin Landseer, exhibition catalogue, London 1981, pp. 64 and 67, reproduced pl. 25;
R. Ormond, The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands, exhibition catalogue, Edinburgh 2005, p. 26, reproduced in colour p. 29, pl. 14.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Structural Condition The artist's board is providing a secure and stable support, with no evidence of any structural intervention in the past. The top left corner of the board is very slightly distorted, but this is beneath the framing sight edge. Paint Surface The paint surface has a very discoloured varnish layer and cleaning should result in a considerable colour change. There are a number of surface abrasions and deposits in the varnish layers which would be simply resolved by revarnishing. Inspection under ultra-violet light confirms how discoloured the varnish layers have become and shows no evidence of any retouching. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in very good and stable condition with the potential to be transformed by cleaning and revarnishing.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This lively and energetic sketch is the final preparatory study for Landseer’s most important painting inspired by his discovery of Scotland; The Hunting of Chevy Chase (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, fig. 1), which was commissioned by the 6^th Duke of Bedford and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1826. Steeped in the wild and chivalric legends of the border marches, the picture illustrates a scene from the ancient Ballad of Chevy Chase, one of the best known of the medieval border ballads. Published by Thomas Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry in 1765, the song recounts the tale of a battle between the leaders of two of the great border families, the English Earl of Northumberland and his great rival and proverbial enemy for many generations, the Scottish Earl of Douglas. The legend tells how Northumberland led a large hunting party across the border into Scotland to hunt an ancient ‘chase’ of land in the Cheviot Hills (hence the term Chevy Chase). Douglas, who had forbidden any other to pursue the game on his demesne, interprets the English Lord’s actions as an invasion of Scotland and leads an army to meet Northumberland. In the ensuing epic battle both leaders are killed, together with the majority of their men, and only a handful of survivors are left to recount the tale. Some early sources suggest that the ballad is inspired by the actual events of the Battle of Otterburn in 1388, fought between James Douglas, 2^nd Earl of Douglas and Sir Harry Hotspur, eldest son of Henry Percy, 1^st Earl of Northumberland. The lyrics, however, are not historically accurate, and it is more likely that the song incorporates elements from other skirmishes, stretching over a century of border rivalry and hereditary conflict. Landseer’s sketch, as well as the finished painting, illustrates the first nine stanzas of the poem, depicting the deer hunt in Chevy Case itself.¹ A similar sketch, the same size as the present work, entitled The Battle of Chevy Chase (Sheffield City Art Galleries), was also in the artist studio sale, lot 271, though no large scale work was ever produced from it. Illustrating the closing stanzas of the poem, it depicts the scene of carnage after the battle and does suggest that Landseer intended to paint a sequel to the Birmingham picture.

A keen supporter of Landseer’s, and one of the artist’s most important patrons, the Duke of Bedford was gathering together a group of contemporary history paintings for the gallery at Woburn Abbey and encouraged the artist in this elevated genre. In choosing to focus on the hunt, rather than the battle, however, Landseer demonstrated his real interest in the subject, and in both the sketch and the finished picture the composition lives through the superbly realised group of contorted animals in the foreground. Landseer had been attracted to hunting scenes long before he visited Scotland. In 1821 he had exhibited The Seizure of a Boar (formerly Lansdowne Collection, Bowood), and painted an oil sketch of a Bull Attacked by Dogs (Private Collection). In 1820 he had already laid out the central motif of the stag and dogs for the Hunting of Chevy Chase in an early Hunting Scene (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). His monumental compositions have few precedents in English art, but are instead inspired by the seventeenth-century traditions of Flemish sporting art, particularly the great hunting scenes of Sir Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snyders. At around this date Landseer made a copy of Rubens’ Wolf and Fox Hunt (Metropolitain Museum of Art, New York, see fig. 2), then in the collection of the banker Alexander Baring, 1^st Baron Ashburton, and the influence of the latter artist’s figural composition in this painting can clearly be seen in Landseer’s central rearing equestrian figure, as well as the supporting retainers. Similarly the leaping hind on the far right, as well as the foreground stag, are both borrowed from Frans Snyders Staghunt (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), versions of which the artist would have seen in the collections of the Duke of Northumberland and the Earl of Darnley. With its dramatic movement and dynamic relationship between man and beast, this sketch captures the spirit of the original Rubens, especially in the figure of Earl Percy, which becomes somewhat wooden in the finished painting. The undulating forms created by the dogs as they bring the stag to bay create a pattern which forces the eye towards the sinuous rhythms of the central group, and the seething mass of disparate forms become united in one swirling, tumultuous whole.

Despite these obvious references, however, the picture is permeated by the romantic imagery of the Scottish landscape and culture that was so powerfully evoked in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott. In 1824 Landseer had visited Scott at Abbotsford, and may have stayed at Chillingham Castle, close to the supposed scene of the battle. It is this combination of Rubensian drama and compositional structure, with a uniquely early nineteenth century sense of romanticism; of great deeds played out in a picturesque and highly charged atmosphere inspired by the literary vision of Scott’s work, that makes Landseer’s Scottish subjects so uniquely powerful, and evocatively moving.        

^1. The Royal Academy catalogue for 1826 included the first two lines from verso two and four from a sixteenth-century version of the poem: 'To drive the deere with hound and horse / Erle Percy took his way; / The chiefest harts in Chevy Chase / To kill and beare away.'