Not on display

A Highland Breakfast

Oil Painting
ca. 1834 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Landseer, Edwin Henry (painter (artist))

A Highland Breakfast shows a young mother tenderly suckling her baby while a group of dogs feeds from a tub nearby. When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834 the Athenaeum commended 'the group of terriers and hounds... socially toiling with their teeth.... [and the] young mother giving her child the breast... the innocence of the latter, and the truth and nature of the former are equally striking'. The work is a fine example of Landseer's ability to combine a genre situation with canine studies in an intimate Scottish setting.

Object details

Categories
Paintings
Anthropomorphism
Images Online
Scotland
Object type
Oil painting
TitleA Highland Breakfast (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Oil on panel
Oil Paint
Panel
Oil Painting
Brief description
Oil painting, 'A Highland Breakfast', Edwin Henry Landseer, ca. 1834
Dimensions
  • Estimate height: 43.2cm
  • Estimate width: 54cm
  • Frame dimensions height: 79.5cm
  • Frame dimensions width: 94.5cm
  • Frame dimensions depth: 8.5cm
Dimensions taken from Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990
Style
British School
Credit line
Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857
Object history
Given by John Sheepshanks, 1857
Summary
A Highland Breakfast shows a young mother tenderly suckling her baby while a group of dogs feeds from a tub nearby. When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834 the Athenaeum commended 'the group of terriers and hounds... socially toiling with their teeth.... [and the] young mother giving her child the breast... the innocence of the latter, and the truth and nature of the former are equally striking'. The work is a fine example of Landseer's ability to combine a genre situation with canine studies in an intimate Scottish setting.
Bibliographic references
  • Catalogue of British Oil Paintings 1820-1860, Ronald Parkinson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: HMSO, 1990, p. 139
  • Richard Ormond, Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands. Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2005.
  • p.68 Tom Ewart, Stephan Brakensiek ... [et al.] eds. Les animaux dans l'art Luxembourg : Villa Vauban, c2013. Description: 96 p. : col. ill., ports. ; 30 cm. ISBN: 9782919878024
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
FA.87[O]

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Record createdMarch 20, 2007
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O133291/a-highland-breakfast-oil-painting-landseer-edwin-henry/
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