Sir Edwin Henry Landseer

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

?1832, exhibited 1833

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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

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emotions, concepts and ideas(16,875)
- 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)

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