Edwin Landseer (British painter) 1802 - 1873
Doctor's Visit to Poor Relatiobs at the Zoological Gardens, s.d.
oil on canvas
91.5 x 71 cm. (36 x 28 in.)
private collection
Catalogue Note Sotheby's
'Among Landseer's last works 'The Sick Monkey', or, as it was originally called, 'Doctor's Visit to Poor Relations at the Zoological Gardens,' occupies a prominent place, and offers an admirable example of the kind of subject of which Landseer was the originator and in the portrayal of which he was pre-eminent. In a cage at the London Zoological Gardens a young monkey, sick and suffering, is tenderly cared for by its mother, to whom it clings with all the dependence of an ailing child. On a rail behind sits the "doctor," quietly devouring an orange, while he holds another in his hind paws. The soft gray fur of the mother and child and the coat of the doctor, its black offset by the two bright spots of color supplied by the oranges, are excellently painted, as are also the forms and attitudes of the animals, and their almost human expressions indicative of suffering in the baby-monkey's face, anxious solicitude in the mother's, and calm indifference on the part of the "doctor."' (James A. Manson, Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., 1902, p.171)
Another possible source for the subject has been recently identified; a short article by Frank Buckland (the eccentric son of the geologist William Buckland) in vol. 1 of The Animal World, the journal of the RSPCA, 1869 entitled ‘My Monkeys – “The Hag” and “Tiny”’. Tiny, a very small monkey, had been handed over to him by Bartlett, the superintendent of the Zoological Gardens, in a moribund state. ‘I put her into The Hag’s cage. The old lady at once “took to her,” and instantly began the office of nurse: she cuddled up poor Tiny in her arms, – made faces and showed her teeth at anybody who attempted to touch her’. It seems very likely that Landseer saw this article and The Animal World later featured wood engravings from many of his paintings.
The species of monkey depicted in Landseer's painting include a capuchin from central and South America and the Asian rhesus macaque. The painting's owner Lord Northbrook would have known the latter from his time as Viceroy of India. The picture may have been stimulated by a visit to the Zoological Gardens where Landseer witnessed the scene of a mother macaque comforting her ailing infant. The event was witnessed by the artist Frederick Goodall: 'One Sunday I met Sir Edwin Landseer and strolled round with him. He was attracted very much in the monkey-house by a mother with her sick child hugging it. This incident formed the subject of one of his most touching pictures. He caught to perfection the expression of the mother with tears in her eyes. He called the picture "The Doctor's Fee" the doctor being represented by a black monkey with white whiskers sucking an orange.' (Frederick Goodall, Reminiscences, 1902, pp.301-2). Actually, however, it is clear from the differing colours that Landseer intended to represent a monkey ‘adopting’ a weaker one of a different species – a form of behaviour that was noted at the time in the Illustrated London News.
James Dafforne had another interpretation of the characters represented in the picture; 'In " The Doctor's Visit to Poor Relations at the Zoological Gardens," another contribution to the year's exhibition, the painter reverts to that humorous manner of representing the animal tribes which characterises so many of his earlier works. The physician, personified by a large monkey, is soothingly nursing a youngster of the race; while a black adult monkey sits above them, and devours an orange. The grotesque group might almost pass for human beings, from the way in which they are placed on the canvas, as if Landseer intended his picture to be a development of the Darwinian theory. The painting of these animals is marvellously true to nature.' (James Dafforne, Pictures by Sir Edwin Landseer, Royal Academician, with Descriptions and a Biographical Sketch of the Painter, 1873, p.66)
Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published in 1859, only eleven years before Landseer painted Doctor's Visit to Poor Relations at the Zoological Gardens and the impact of the anthropomorphism of the monkeys to a nineteenth-century audience still reeling from Darwin's evolutionary theories, should not be understated. Landseer was not a caricaturist and in his picture the monkeys are very monkey-like, but the idea of depicting the sympathy and solicitude of the grey monkey was a modern way at looking at animals as capable of emotion rather than simply as dumb beasts, and was very different from the demonization of apes and monkeys in earlier art. Although Darwin’s Origin had said almost nothing about human evolution, the implications of his theories were fully developed during the 1860s by other scientists, notably Thomas Henry Huxley, and the Darwinian aspect of Landseer’s picture was remarked on by critics of the time. It is fascinating that in The Descent of Man, published a year after Landseer’s picture was exhibited, Darwin noted that captive monkeys often adopted and protected those of different species – for him a proof of incipient altruism akin to human behaviour. The painting was well-known from an engraving by William Henry Simmons (1875) and from its extensive exhibition history.
In 1871 the Illustrated London News published an engraving by George du Maurier of fashionable ladies and children The Darwinian Theory - A Sketch in the Monkey House of the Zoological Gardens, the contrast of the elegant dresses and hairstyles of the women and the naked animalism of the monkeys being pronounced. The crowds around the cages also demonstrates the great interest in monkeys generated by Darwin's controversial new theory.
We are very grateful to Prof. Diana Donald and Richard Ormond for their assistance with the cataloguing and additions to this catalogue note.
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Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) was a child prodigy, exhibiting some drawings at the Royal Academy when he was only 13. From an early age he was a frequent visitor to the menagerie in Exeter Change in the Strand, London, where he drew lions, monkeys and other animals. Animals remained the main subjects of his art. Queen Victoria collected his paintings, as did John Sheepshanks. The two biggest collections of his work are in the Royal Collection and in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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