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Animal paintings have always been dear to the heart of the British collector, from the gamepieces of the 17th century (such as the work in our collection by Ferguson - click here to view our full collection), through the paintings of Stubbs and his peers to the work of, for example, Landseer. Landseer is, perhaps, the creator par excellence of animal paintings, his 'sitters' endued with such expressive qualities that Charles Darwin wished to use the artist's Alexander and Diogenes to illustrate his book, The Expression of the Emotions (1872). Mark Mitchell Paintings has acquired an impressive copy of this particular picture by the Victorian portrait painter John Lewis Reilly, whose skill has produced a faithful replica of one of the most famous of all animal paintings.
You can see this example of Reilly's animal paintings online at our website, Mark Mitchell Paintings & Drawings, or make an appointment to come and see it in person in our London gallery. As an example of one of the greatest of Victorian animal paintings it is unique: a replica painted in situ in the gallery where it hung.
The Victorians viewed animal paintings in an almost entirely anthropomorphic sense; they saw the animal kingdom as providing exemplars of behaviour to emulate or avoid, and the genre as a kind of metaphor for human morality. Animal paintings were also a means of expression for a kind of pure sentiment: Landseer's The old shepherd's chief mourner showing grief as expressed through a dog; perhaps the rival with Alexander & Diogenes as the most famous of his animal paintings.
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