C. G. Lewis (1808-1880) British, Engraving After Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) British, Oil Painting. In color. Engraver information printed at bottom right. Painter information printed at bottom left. Title printed at bottom center: "The First Leap." Depicts Lord Alexander Russell on his pony Emerald. The engraving is from 1850 after the painting from 1829. 

Overall: 30 1/8 X 33 3/4 in. 

Sight: 20 1/2 X 24 1/2 in. 

#2733 . 

Charles George Lewis was born June 13th, 1808 in Enfield, Middlesex, England. He was the second son of the famous etcher Frederick Christian Lewis, and brother of the Orientalist painter John Frederick Lewis. From an early age his father instructed him in both drawing and engraving. He became well known for combining line engraving, stipple, and mezzotint, and from 1830 onward was regularly employed as a printmaker. His most enduring works were plates after the works of Sir Edwin Landseer and Rosa Bonheur. He retired in 1877, and died suddenly from apoplexy at his residence at Felpham, near Bognor, on June 16th, 1880. 

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer was born on March 7th, 1802 in London, the son of the engraver John Landseer. He was recognized as a prodigy early on, apparently ambidextrous and prone to painting with both hands at the same time on completely different subjects, and studied under the history painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who encouraged the young Landseer to perform dissections in order to fully understand animal musculature and skeletal structure. One of his earliest paintings is credited as the origin of the myth that St. Bernard rescue dogs in the Alps carry a small casket of brandy on their collars. At the age of 13 in 1815 he exhibited works at the Royal Academy as an “Honorary Exhibitor.” He was elected an Associate at the minimum age of 24, and an Academician five years later in 1831. He became particularly associated with Scotland, which he had first visited in 1824, and the Highlands in particular, which provided the subjects (both human and animal) for his most well-known paintings. Landseer’s popularity in Victorian Britain was considerable, and his reputation as an animal painter was unrivaled in his lifetime. Much of his fame and substantial income was generated by the publication of engravings of his work, many of them by his brother Thomas and Charles George Lewis. In 1823 Landseer was commissioned to paint a portrait of Georgiana Russell, Duchess of Bedford. Despite her being twenty years older than he was, they began an affair. In his late thirties Landseer suffered what is now believed to be a substantial nervous breakdown, and for the rest of his life was troubled by recurring bouts of melancholy, hypochondria, and depression, often aggravated by alcohol and drug use. He was knighted in 1850, and although elected to be president of the Royal Academy in 1866 he declined the invitation. Queen Victoria commissioned numerous pictures from him, initially of various royal pets and then a portrait of herself as a present for Prince Albert the year before their marriage. He taught both Victoria and Albert to etch, and made portraits of their children as babies, usually in the company of a dog. One of his last paintings was a life-size equestrian portrait of the Queen, shown at the Royal Academy in 1873, made from earlier sketches. In the last few years of his life Landseer’s mental stability deteriorated rapidly, and at the request of his family he was declared insane in July 1872. His death on October 1st, 1873 was widely marked in England: shops and houses lowered their blinds, flags flew at half mast, the bronze lions that he had made for the base of Nelson’s Column were hung with wreaths, and large crowds lined the streets to watch his funeral cortege pass. He was buried with the highest honors in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Today his works can be found in Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Wallace Collection in London.