Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveler

1820

Sir Edwin Landseer

Painter, British, 1802 - 1873

Two large dogs approach a man lying unconscious and mostly buried in the snow in this horizontal painting. The head of the man comes toward us, at the lower center of the composition, and the dogs are close to us. In the center of the painting, a large tan and white dog has short, glossy fur and floppy ears, and its jowly mouth hangs open with the pink tongue visible. It paws at the snow partially covering most of the body of the man, who wears an olive-green coat with a fur collar and white shirt. The dog looks up to our right, and its body and white-tipped tail recede diagonally into the picture to the left. There is a red blanket with black edging over the dog’s back, and the hound wears a wide, fur-lined silver collar ornamented with metalwork lions and bells. The second dog, a dark brown brindle color, sits to the immediate left of the first dog. It gazes down at the prone person and bends its head down to lick a bare pale, pink hand that protrudes from under the snow. The brindle dog wears a small barrel around its neck on a brown buckled leather collar. The man’s dark brown hair falls over the snow. His pale gray face is upward, and his shoulders are visible while his arms splay out, and the rest of his body, extending into the picture, is covered with snow. The man’s eyes are closed. His right hand, in a tan leather glove, reaches toward us from the snow, while a green velvet cap with a red ribbon lies under the hand. The scene is enclosed by large, angular, steel and blue-gray boulders and rock formations, with two craggy pine trees above. Beyond lies a mountain landscape with a V-shaped pass at the center top framed by the steep ascent of jagged, snowy hillsides and a sliver of blue sky. A blocky stone building is nestled in among the crags to our right. On a path leading from the building, three bearded men wearing black caps and robes hurry toward the dogs. The nearest of them holds up a staff with a cross on the top and waves or signals to the men farther back along the path.

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Edwin Landseer was only 18 when he painted this powerful work showing a rescue in the Great Saint Bernard Pass in the Alps. Two dogs have found an unconscious man partially buried by snow. They work to uncover him and alert monks in the background, who are already rushing to his aid.

Augustinian monks had established a hospice (shelter) in the pass to help anyone in need of housing or medical attention. The large dogs they bred, which were famous for finding and rescuing travelers, are the ancestors of the Saint Bernards we know today.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 61

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Patrons' Permanent Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 189 × 237 cm (74 7/16 × 93 5/16 in.)
    framed: 219.71 × 267.65 × 15.88 cm (86 1/2 × 105 3/8 × 6 1/4 in.)
    framed weight: 81.647 kg (180 lb.)

  • Accession

    2019.120.1

More About this Artwork

Sir Edwin Landseer, The Connoisseurs: Portrait of the Artist with two Dogs, before Jun 1865, oil on canvas, Royal Collection Trust/© His Majesty King Charles III 2022

Article:  Who Is Sir Edwin Landseer? 10 Things to Know

A look at the prodigy who became so famous for his paintings of animals that a dog breed was named after him.

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased 1820 from the artist by Jesse Watts Russell [1786-1875], Ilam Hall, Staffordshire;[1] (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 3 July 1875, no. 29, as St. Bernard Dogs); (Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd., London);[2] sold 8 July 1875 to Richard Peacock [1820-1889], Gorton Hall, near Manchester;[3] (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 4 May 1889, no. 65, as Alpine Mastiffs, not sold);[4] Richard Peacock estate; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 26 March 1892, no. 118, as Alpine Mastiffs); Anderson;[5] Richard Peacock's son, Col. Ralph Peacock [1838-1928]; (his estate sale, Knight, Frank and Rutley, London, 31 October 1928, no. 67). (Wildenstein & Co., New York).[6] Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge [1882-1973], New Jersey;[7] (her estate sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 5 December 1975, no. 54); Jonathan "Jack" Westervelt Warner [1917-2017], Tuscaloosa, Alabama; (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 4 June 1993, no. 61). private collection, Mexico City. (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 7 December 2017, no. 36); (The Matthiesen Gallery, London); purchased November 2019 by NGA.
[1] "Article XXV. List of Pictures sold at the British Institution in the Exhibition of 1820, with the Names of the Purchasers etc. up to the 14th of April." Annals of the Fine Arts 5, no. 16 (1820): 221.
[2] At this point in the provenance the 1975 Sotheby Parke Bernet sale catalogue lists Samuel Addington (1806-1886) as the owner of the painting, by 1880. Addington was a wealthy British wool merchant, and his art and manuscript collections were dispersed at several sales both before and after his death. The 1975 catalogue says the painting was lot number 83 in the Addington estate sale of 22 May 1886. However, the size given in the 1886 sale catalogue was 18 x 24 inches, and the work was described as from the Gillott Collection, neither of which details match the NGA painting.
[3] The painting was Agnew stock number 9621. See Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd. Archive, reference number NGA27, Research Centre, National Gallery, London: Agnew Picture Stock Book, 1874-1879, reference NGA27/1/1/5, p. 55, available on-line: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/research-centre/agnews-stock-books/reference-nga27115-1874-79, accessed 7 November 2019, copy in NGA curatorial files.
[4] The copy of the sale catalogue available in the Knoedler Library Auction Catalogues on Microfiche is annotated "not sold." This information was kindly confirmed by Lynda McLeod, Christie's Archives Associate Director and Librarian, in her e-mail of 15 November 2019, in NGA curatorial files. The reserve price was 2,000 guineas, and bidding only reached 1,850 guineas.
[5] A copy of the sale catalogue in the NGA Library is annotated with this name as the buyer.
[6] The Wildenstein name first appears connected to the painting in the catalogue of the 1975 Geraldine Dodge estate sale. Joseph Baillio of Wildenstein kindly checked the company's accessible archives, but found no record of the painting (see his e-mail of 27 January 2020, in NGA curatorial files).
[7] It has not yet been determined when and from where Mrs. Dodge acquired the painting (her full name was Ethel Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge). It is possible there is mention of the acquisition in her diaries and scrapbooks, which are in the William Rockefeller family papers, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York (https://rockarch.org/). For an account of Mrs. Dodge's collecting, see Barbara J. Mitnick, Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, Morristown, New Jersey, 2000: 96-104, 136 nn. 1-14.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1820

  • British Institution, London, 1820, no. 277.

1842

  • Exhibition of Modern Works of Art, Birmingham Society of Artists, 1842, no. 250. [1]

1857

  • Art Treasures of the United Kingdom: Paintings by Modern Masters, Art Treasures Palace, Manchester, 1857, no. 391, as The Dogs of St. Bernard.

1981

  • Sir Edwin Landseer, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Tate Gallery, London, 1981-1982, no. 13, repro.

Bibliography

1820

  • "Article XIII. Exhibition of the Works of British Artists placed in the Gallery of the British Institution, Pall Mall, for exhibition and sale; Article XXV. List of Pictures sold at the British Institution in the Exhibition of 1820, with the Names of the Purchasers etc. up to the 14th of April." Annals of the Fine Arts 5, no. 16 (1820): 153, 221.

1831

  • Landseer, John. Some Account of the Dogs and of the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard; Intended to Accompany an Engraving after a Picture by Edwin Landseer, R.A. Elect, (In the Collection of Jesse Watts Russell, Esq.) of Alpine Mastiffs Extricating an Overwhelmed Traveller from the Snow. London, 1831.

1869

  • Stephens, Frederic George. The Early Works of Sir Edwin Landseer. London, 1869: 39.

1874

  • Stephens, Frederic George. Memoirs of Sir Edwin Landseer: A Sketch of the Life of the Artist. London, 1874: 59-60, 161, 167, 175.

  • Mann, Caleb Scholefield. The Works of Sir E. Landseer. 4 vols. Unpublished manuscript, National Art Library (Great Britain), London, MSL/1937/1313-1316, 1874-1877: 2:31.

1875

  • Graves, Algernon. Catalogue of the Works of the late Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A.. London, 1875: 6, no. 42.

1879

  • Monkhouse, William Cosmo. The Works of Edwin Landseer. 2 vols. London, 1879: 2:38-39, 43 fig. 30 (sketch for the painting)..

1902

  • Manson, James A. Sir Edwin Landseer R.A. London, 1902: 38, 41-42, 44, 203, 207.

1932

  • Grierson, Herbert J.C. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott. 12 vols. London, 1932-1937: 6:286.

1934

  • Grierson, Herbert J.C., ed. The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, 1819-1821. Vol. 6 of 12. London, 1934: 286.

1976

  • Lennie, Campbell. Landseer: The Victorian Paragon. London, 1976: 24-25, 38, 112.

2006

  • Wynn, M.B. The History of the Mastiff. Cookhill, 2006: n.p.

2007

  • Donald, Diana. Picturing Animals in Britain, 1750-1850. New Haven and London, 2007: 132-133, 333 nn. 34-36.

Inscriptions

center, on the red blanket: S.T.B; reverse, on the original canvas: Edn Landseer / Painted 1820[1]

Wikidata ID

Q108686609

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