Sir Edwin Henry Landseer

Deer and Deer Hounds in a Mountain Torrent (‘The Hunted Stag’)

?1832, exhibited 1833

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

On loan

Hong Kong Museum of Art (Hong Kong, China): British Landscape

Artist: Sir Edwin Henry Landseer 1802–1873
Medium: Oil paint on canvas on mahogany
Dimensions: Support: 405 × 908 mm
frame: 1015 × 1220 × 130 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Robert Vernon 1847
Reference: N00412

Display caption

Landseer achieved enormous success with his scenes of animal life, which ranged from the heroic to the sentimental. This is one of several Highland scenes where the stag is portrayed as a noble beast: having endeavoured to hold the hounds at bay by retreating to a deep stream, the stag is defiant even in his final torment, before the deer-stalker's fatal shot. As a primordial contest between man and Nature, the subject of hunting had been an important theme in British art since at least the eighteenth century. Here the sense of struggle is intensified by the tumultuous scenery.

Gallery label, March 2010

Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.

Explore

emotions, concepts and ideas(16,874)
- emotions and human qualities(5,366)
- - courage(56)
leisure and pastimes(7,669)
- recreational activities(2,861)
- - hunting(165)
nature(45,213)
- animals: mammals(4,859)
- - deer(122)
  - dog, staghound(4)
- landscape(25,912)
- - gorge(629)
  - rocky(2,833)
- water: inland(11,122)
- - river(7,971)
  - waterfall(454)

You might like

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer A Scene at Abbotsford

exhibited 1827

On display at Tate Britain part of Walk Through British Art
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer Dignity and Impudence

1839
Henry Thomas Alken The Belvoir Hunt: Full Cry

c.1830–40
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer High Life

1829, exhibited 1831
Henry Thomas Alken The Belvoir Hunt: Jumping into and out of a Lane

c.1830–40
John Ferneley II Hunt Scurry

1832
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer Low Life

1829, exhibited 1831
John Frederick Lewis Buck-Shooting in Windsor Great Park

1825
Henry Thomas Alken The Belvoir Hunt: The Meet

c.1830–40
Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bt Landscape, with Jacques and the Wounded Stag

?1819
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer Alexander and Diogenes

exhibited 1848
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer Boy, Donkey and Foal - Mischief in Full Play

1822
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society

exhibited 1838
Ramsay Richard Reinagle Trees and Waterfall, a Lion Devouring a Deer

date not known

View by appointment
John Ferneley I Major Healey, Wearing Raby Hunt Uniform, Riding with the Sedgefield Hunt

c.1833