Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) was the greatest British animal painter of the nineteenth century, and for his contemporaries the greatest artist of the age. The secret of his success lay in his ability to invest the natural world with feeling and imagination, allied to brilliant descriptive powers. Landseer was born in 1802, the son of the author and engraver, John Landseer, and his wife, Jane Potts. A child prodigy, he first exhibited animal studies at the Royal Academy in 1815, when he was just thirteen. By the time of his first visit to Scotland in 1824, he had already made a name for himself with works like "Fighting Dogs Getting Wind" and Alpine Mastiffs "Reanimating a Distressed Traveller". Scotland became an inspiration for his finest works. In his paintings he caught the spirit of what it was that attracted visitors to Scotland: the wildness and splendour of the landscape, the sense of space and solitude, and the spectacle of nature red in tooth and claw. Landseer's enthusiasm for the Highlands extended to the Highlanders themselves, whose simple lives and rugged characters he so admired. His superbly detailed scenes capture the very essence and texture of Highland life and contribute to a Romantic vision of Scotland that is still with us today. In 1840, at the height of his powers, Landseer suffered a severe mental breakdown, and his later years were to be clouded by bouts of instability. In spite of this handicap, his imaginative powers showed no signs of deterioration. On the contrary, he produced some of his most memorable and moving images in the period after 1840, among them his great deer pictures. His heroic stags exhibit strength, courage, fearlessness, defiance, loyalty and endurance and none more so than the aptly named "The Monarch of the Glen". Often the victims of man, they also offer inspiration to him in their character as free and sovereign creatures of the high hills - a counterpoint to the sturdy independence and bravery of the British people.