Sir Edwin Land­seer (1802–1873) was a Lon­don-born painter and sculp­tor whose artis­tic tal­ents were recog­nised ear­ly on: at age thir­teen he exhib­it­ed works at the Roy­al Acad­e­my as an “Hon­orary Exhibitor” and was elect­ed as an Asso­ciate there at the min­i­mum age of twen­ty four. He was able to paint extreme­ly quick­ly and per­haps these days would have attract­ed a cool nick­name like snook­er play­ers Hur­ri­cane Hig­gins and Whirl­wind White (Light­ning Land­seer, per­haps); he was also reput­ed to be able to draw simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with both hands. One biog­ra­ph­er wrote:

…upon the occa­sion of a large par­ty assem­bled one evening at the house of a gen­tle­man in Lon­don, the con­ver­sa­tion hav­ing turned upon the sub­ject of feats of skill with the hand, one of the ladies present remarked that it would be impos­si­ble for any­one, how­ev­er skil­ful, to draw two things at once.
“Oh, I can do that,” said Land­seer qui­et­ly; “give me two pen­cils and I will show you.” The pen­cils were brought, and Land­seer, tak­ing one in each hand, drew simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and unhesi­tat­ing­ly the pro­file of a stag’s antlered head with one hand, and with the oth­er the per­fect out­line of the head of a horse.

Cer­tain­ly, Landseer’s renown stemmed from his paint­ings of ani­mals, par­tic­u­lar­ly hors­es, dogs and stags, although his most famous work is undoubt­ed­ly the set of four bronze lion sculp­tures at the base of Nelson’s Col­umn in Trafal­gar Square. Today’s sub­ject is prob­a­bly his next most famous work, though, being, as it is, the ulti­mate bis­cuit tin image of Scot­land: The Monarch of the Glen.

The Monarch of the Glen is an oil-on-can­vas paint­ing depict­ing a red deer stag, set against the steamy rugged hills of the Scot­tish High­lands. It was com­plet­ed in 1851 as part of a series of three pan­els intend­ed to hang in the Refresh­ment Rooms of the House of Lords, although that com­mis­sion nev­er came off due to some dis­pute or oth­er and it was sold into pri­vate own­er­ship. It also, how­ev­er, sold wide­ly in repro­duc­tions and became one of the most pop­u­lar paint­ings of the 19th cen­tu­ry. It prob­a­bly helped that Queen Vic­to­ria was a big fan.

The paint­ing was pur­chased in 1916 by the Pears soap com­pa­ny and this kicked off the Monarch’s career in adver­tis­ing. It was sold on to John Dewar & Sons dis­tillery and became their trade­mark before sim­i­lar­ly being used by Glen­fid­dich on their whisky bot­tles. A deriv­a­tive of the Monarch graced the shelves of Har­rods and Fort­num & Mason via the cans of Bax­ter’s Roy­al Game Soup, and of course, as implied, it adorned many a tin of short­bread bis­cuits. In 2017, the paint­ing was final­ly sold by its last own­er Dia­geo to the Nation­al Muse­um of Scot­land in Edin­burgh, where it can now be viewed by the pub­lic in all its majesty.

The stag has twelve points on his antlers, which in deer ter­mi­nol­o­gy makes him a “roy­al stag” not a “monarch stag”, for which six­teen points are need­ed, but let’s not quib­ble; he’s a mag­nif­i­cent beast.