Gautier on Landseer
Gautier surveyed art in 1855, His comments about Landseer's work reflect great knowledge and tolerance of the artist.
"Landseer gives his beloved animals soul, thought, poetry, and passion, He endows them with an intellectual life almost like our own; he would, if he dared, take away their instinct and accord them free will; what worries him is not anatomical exactitude, complicated joints, the thickness of the paint, masterful brushwork: it is the very spirit of the beast, and in this respect there is no painter to match him; he penetrates the secret of these dark brains, he knows what makes these unconscious little hearts beat, and reads in these dreamy eyes the faint astonishment produced there by the spectacle of things. Of what does the hunting dog dream near the hearth, the sheep ruminating on its bent knees, the stag raising to the sky its black and glossy muzzle from which drip strands of saliva? Landseer will tell you in four strokes of his brush. He is on intimate terms with beasts: the dog, giving him a shake of the paw like a comrade, tells him the news of the kennel; the sheep, blinking its pale eyes, bleats out its innocent complaints to him; the stag, which, like a woman, has the gift of tears, comes to weep on his breast over the cruelty of man, and the artist consoles them as best he can, for he loves them with a deep tenderness and does not have a fool's disdainful scorn for their afflictions."
Theophile Gautier, Les Beaux-Arts en Europe -1855
(Paris, 1855) vol 1. pp.72-77
