of his pen and ink work, can
deny that he was a master of line. A dozen scratches, and the whole
picture is there! There is a charming little Landseer portrait of my
mother with my eldest sister, in Room III of the Tate Gallery. Landseer
preferred painting on panel, and he never would allow his pictures to
be varnished. His wishes have been obeyed in that respect; none of the
Landseers my family possess have ever been varnished.

He was certainly an unconventional guest in a country house. My father
had rented a deer-forest on a long lease from Cluny Macpherson, and had
built a large house there, on Loch Laggan. As that was before the days
of railways, the interior of the house at Ardverikie was necessarily
very plain, and the rooms were merely whitewashed. Landseer complained
that the glare of the whitewash in the dining-room hurt his eyes, and
without saying a word to any one, he one day produced his colours,
mounted a pair of steps, and proceeded to rough-in a design in charcoal
on the white walls. He worked away until he had completely covered the
walls with frescoes in colour. The originals of some of his best-known
engravings, "The Sanctuary," "The Challenge," "The Monarch of the
Glen," made their first appearance on the walls of the dining-room at
Ardverikie. The house was unfortunately destroyed by fire some years
later, and Landseer's frescoes perished with it.

At another time, my father leased for two years a large house in the
Midlands. The dining-hall of this house was hung with hideously wooden
full-length portraits of the family owning it. Landseer declared that
these monstrous pictures took away his appetite, so without any
permission he one day mounted a ladder, put in high-lights with white
chalk over the oils, made the dull eyes sparkle, and gave some
semblance of life to these forlorn effigies. Pleased with his success,
he then brightened up the flesh tints with red chalk, and put some
drawing into the faces. To complete his work, he rubbed blacks into the
backgrounds with charcoal. The result was so excellent that we let it
remain. At the conclusion of my father's tenancy, the family to whom
the place belonged were perfectly furious at the disrespect with which
their cherished portraits had been treated, for it was a traditional
article of faith with them that they were priceless works of art.

Towards the end of his life Landseer became hopelessly insane and,
during his periods of violence a dang