A Sow

Former TitleA Boar

Artist Sir Edwin Landseer (English, 1802 - 1873)

Date1820

MediumGraphite, watercolor, and gouache on paper

DimensionsOverall: 8 5/8 × 11 1/8 inches (21.92 × 28.27 cm)
Framed: 18 × 19 1/4 × 1 inches (45.72 × 48.9 × 2.54 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Milton McGreevy through the Westport Fund

Object numberF56-70

SignedRecto, below at center: "E L 1820"

On View

Not on view

Collections

European Art

Terms

Exhibition History

Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 7-April 4, 1965, no. 96, as A Boar.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 29, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, no. 66, as A Sow.

Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, no cat., as A Sow.

Animalia: 19th and 20th Century European Prints and Drawings, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 28-June 18, 2015, no cat., as A Sow.

Gallery Label

Edwin Landseer specialized in the representation of animals throughout his career. As a precocious young artist, he was frequently commissioned to draw prize farm animals, and this drawing was produced when he was only eighteen. Landseer animates his work with touches of pink to suggest the pig’s soft underbelly and flecks of white to suggest its downy coat. The animal has a sense of melancholy in its expression. Landseer subsequently went on to enjoy great fame and fortune, becoming the favorite painter of Queen Victoria before ultimately declining into insanity.

Provenance

Colonel Digby Hamilton, The Priory, Ongar, Essex, UK [1];

Given by Colonel Digby Hamilton to SDH [?], March 16, 1877;

With P. and D. Colnaghi, London, by March 27, 1956;

Purchased from Colnaghi by Durlacher Brothers, New York, stock no. 622D, March 27-September 13, 1956 [2];

Purchased from Durlacher Brothers by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1956.

NOTES:

[1] A label of stationer’s paper, formerly attached to the verso, bears the inscription Portrait of a Boar in the / possession of Colonel Hamilton / Priory, Ongar, Essex- / Drawn by Sr. Edwin Landseer in / the year 1818 or 1819-when he / was a very young man- / Charlotte Hamilton and, in another hand, Given to me by Col. Digby Hamilton / 16 March 1877. SDH.

[2] Getty Research Library, Los Angeles, Durlacher Brothers Records, Box 14, Ledger 1937-1966, copy in Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

Published References

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 134, (repro.), as A Boar.

“Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 4, no. 6 (March 7-April 4, 1965): 47, (repro.), as A Boar.

Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 12, 204-05, (repro.), as A Sow.

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