Sir Edwin Henry Landseer

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

?1832, exhibited 1833

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Not on display
Artist
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer 1802–1873
Medium
Oil paint on canvas on mahogany
Dimensions
Support: 405 x 908 mm
frame: 1015 x 1220 x 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

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Victorian / Genre

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Sir George Howland Beaumont, Bt, ‘Landscape, with Jacques and the Wounded Stag’ ?1819

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Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, ‘Boy, Donkey and Foal - Mischief in Full Play’ 1822

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