Oil paint on mahogany
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Robert Vernon
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-edwin-henry-landseer-323" aria-label="More by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Sir Edwin Henry Landseer</a>
Highland Music
Presented by Robert Vernon 1847
Aberdeenshire
actions: postures and motions
adults
animals: actions
animals: mammals
bowl
chest
dog - non-specific
domestic
fine arts and music
furnishings
howling
instrument, bagpipes
interiors
jug
leisure and pastimes
living room
man
music
music and entertainment
objects
people
places
Scotland
sitting
UK counties
UK countries and regions
vessels and containers
<p>Traces of a distinctive, and often sentimentalised, Scottish life were shown in innumerable paintings from the late eighteenth century onwards. One of the most conspicuous survivals of ‘old’ Scotland was music played on bagpipes, fiddles and harps.</p><p>Paintings like this contributed to the evolving nineteenth-century nostalgia for traditional ways of life, being transformed and lost with urbanisation and industrialisation. Such ‘real life’ paintings can be found in all the nations of Britain throughout the nineteenth century.</p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2004</em></p>
painting oil paint mahogany
14 April 2005 – 10 July 2005
2005-07-10
14 April 2005 – 10 July 2005
2005-07-10
2005-04-14
Royal Scottish Academy (Edinburgh, UK)
http://www.royalscottishacademy.org
2005-04-14
Landseer in the Highlands
Loan-out
Highland Music
support: 470 × 591 mm
Presented by <a href="/search?gid=999999978" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Robert Vernon</a> 1847
<p><i>Highland Music</i> is one of a group of Scottish <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/genres" title="Glossary definition for 'Genres'"><span>genre</span></a> subjects Landseer produced during the late 1820s and early 1830s. He painted this picture at his Highland retreat in Glen Feshie, near Braemar, where the Duchess of Bedford had built a series of wooden and turf huts.  Typical of the series, it is a highly finished interior scene, focusing on the humble pleasures of everyday life in the Highlands.  The influence of Dutch art is clear in the minute detail and the effect of light, especially on the domestic utensils, but the touch of humour created by the dogs is unique to Landseer. 

</p><p>The reviewer for the <i>Court Journal</i> thought the title of <i>Highland Music</i> was 'facetious' and described the work as 'half-a-dozen dogs howling to the sound of their master's bagpipes - as if they had never heard it before, and as if the principal performers in such a concert would be likely to continue it under such accompaniments' (<i>Court Journal</i>, 6 February 1830). Landseer juxtaposes human and canine behaviour in a similar way in another of his Scottish interiors, <i>A Highland Breakfast</i> (<i>c</i>.1834, Victoria and Albert Museum, London).  Whereas in <i>Highland Music</i>, he compares the wailing of the bagpipes with the dogs' howling, in the later <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> he contrasts a mother feeding her baby with a terrier suckling her puppies.  

</p><p>Landseer's dog paintings of the 1830s are among his most popular works.  About half consist of commissioned, life-size dog '<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portraits</span></a>', the rest are independent subjects, smaller in scale and usually with a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/n/narrative" title="Glossary definition for 'Narrative'"><span>narrative</span></a> content.  Dogs figure largely in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and the subject of this picture may have been suggested by Landseer's concurrent commission to illustrate the Waverley novels, which appeared from 1829 onwards.

</p><p>The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1830 and was probably the first Landseer acquired by Robert Vernon, who had an important collection of 19<sup>th</sup> Century British art.  Vernon went on to add several more works by Landseer to his collection, seven of which he bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1847.  Two of these were destroyed in the flood of 1928, but five are still in the Tate collection (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/landseer-low-life-a00702" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>A00702</span></a>, <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/landseer-high-life-a00703" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>A00703</span></a>, <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/landseer-deer-and-deer-hounds-in-a-mountain-torrent-the-hunted-stag-n00412" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00412</span></a>, <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/landseer-king-charles-spaniels-the-cavaliers-pets-n00409" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00409</span></a> and <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/landseer-a-dialogue-at-waterloo-n00415" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00415</span></a>).

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Robin Hamlyn, <i>Robert Vernon's Gift - British Art for the Nation 1847</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p.51, no.40, reproduced p.51.<br/>Richard Ormond, <i>Sir Edwin Landseer</i>, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 1982, p.82.

</p><p>Frances Fowle<br/>December 2000<br/></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="pbodytext">
<span class="text7">Traces of a distinctive, and often sentimentalised,      Scottish life were shown in innumerable <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>paintings</span></a> from the late eighteenth      century onwards. One of the </span><span class="text6">most conspicuous      survivals of ‘old’ Scotland</span><span class="text7"> was      music played on bagpipes, fiddles and harps. </span>
</div>
<div class="para9">
<span class="text7">
<br/> </span>
</div>
<div class="pbodytext">
<span class="text7">Paintings like this contributed to the evolving      nineteenth-century nostalgia for traditional ways of life, being      transformed and lost with urbanisation and industrialisation. Such      ‘real life’ paintings can be found in all the nations of      Britain throughout the nineteenth century. </span>
</div>

Display caption
2004-09-10T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
Aberdeenshire actions: postures and motions adults animals: actions animals: mammals bowl chest dog - non-specific domestic fine arts and music furnishings howling instrument, bagpipes interiors jug leisure and pastimes living room man music music and entertainment objects people places Scotland sitting UK counties UK countries and regions vessels and containers