THE LANDSEER FAMILY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1910, 8 April 1880, Page 4

THE LANDSEER FAMILY.

With the death o£ Mr Thomas Landseer, an artistic family of great eminence ends its ■work, at least fo 1 ’ this gen ration. The father of Thomas, Charles, and Edwin Landseer was an engraver, and the talent of these three artists was, like that of Kaffaelle, hereditary. Art runs more in families than most forms of intellectual tendency. The Bachs have added, in the course of two hundred and forty years, no fewer than fifty names to the history of music. Many of the old Italian masters were the sons of painters or nwsaistes whoso fume has boon obscured Dy that of their greater children. Yet we rarely find a poet with a poet son, or a philosopher whoso child “takes after him,” as Mr John Stuart Mill took after his father, probably the reason is that the son of an artist is attracted and allured from his very infancy by tho colors and instruments of art. The philosopher or the poet has no such attractive properties, nothing but books, pons, ink, and paper. A child is not interested in these, hut even very young children say, “ Draw us a picture,” and are captivated by the imitations of art. Tho elder brothers teach tho younger ones too, as in the great athletic families, like those of the Lytteltons, Graces, Walkers, and the rest. Thus tho families of artists may take to art, very naturally, even without groat hereditary gifts. That of Sir Edwin Landseer was developed out of all proportion to tho talent of his brothers. Edwin Lindseer’s best pictures are among the great works of the English school, and their failure in color is made up for by extraordinary fidelity and humor; sometimeo by a gleam of poetry. The pictures of Charles were, perhaps, no more than respectable, while the skill of Thomas as an engraver was the “ complement,” so to speak, of tho young brother’s genius with pencil and brush. His engravings made Sir Edwin Landseer’s admirable compositions familiar, not only in England, bnt all over the world.