Royal Sports on Hill and Loch, otherwise known as The Boat Picture or the Balmoral misfortune, was a project which occupied Landseer and Queen Victoria for twenty years and resulted in a disappointing finished work, recorded in W. H Simmons’s print of 1874 (Royal Collection). The optimistic early stages of this process produced some much more satisfying sketches. Queen Victoria acquired this one in 1870, when she despaired of seeing the finished painting; it was, she said, ‘valuable to her as a remembrance of happy times.’

The episode depicted was described by the Queen in her journal of 17 September 1850:

‘The lake [Muick] was like a mirror, & the extreme calmness, with the bright sunshine, hazy blue tints on the fine bold outlines of hills coming down in to our sweet loch quite enchanted Landseer. We landed at the usual landing place, where there was a haul of fish.’

This stage of Landseer’s development of the design was described two days later (19 September 1850):

‘the picture is intended to represent me as meeting Albert, who has been stalking, whilst I have been fishing, and the whole is quite consonant with the truth. The solitude, the sport, and the Highlanders in the water &c. will be, as Landseer says, a beautiful historical exemplification of peaceful times, & of the independent life we lead in the dear Highlands. It is quite a new conception, & I think the manner in which he has composed it, will be singularly dignified, poetic & totally novel, for no other Queen has ever enjoyed, what I am fortunate enough to enjoy in our peaceful happy life here. It will tell a great deal, & it is beautiful.’

‘It is to be thus: I, stepping out of the boat at Loch Muick, Albert, in his Highland dress, assisting me out, & I am looking at a stag which he is supposed to have just killed. Bertie is in the dear pony with McDonald (whom Landseer much admires) standing behind, with rifles and plaids on his shoulder.’

Landseer studied with the idealistic history painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846), and is said to have painted the donkey in his Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (1814-20; St Mary’s Seminary, Norwood, Ohio), an ambitious religious scene in which portraits of famous men - Newton, Voltaire, Hazlitt, Keats and Wordsworth - respond in different ways to the sight of their Redeemer. Landseer clearly recalled this eccentric idea, when he decided in this composition to re-invent the Renaissance altarpiece with portraits. Landseer’s model is the sacra conversazione of Raphael or Correggio, where a Madonna is flanked symmetrically by groups of saints holding their attributes. In this case Prince Albert is a St George, his hat like a helmet, his kilt like Roman armour and with a stag instead of a dragon. The huge and noble figure of McDonald, whom Landseer likened to a Giorgione, next to the young prince, makes a group reminiscent of St Christopher carrying the Christ Child. The Queen advances towards the red-carpeted central space (accompanied by Lady Jocelyn with sketching equipment), in order to play the part of the Madonna, but her eyes are turned down with characteristic modesty.

Inscribed on the back: Original Sketch for the Large Picture / Sir. E. Landseer.1850.

Text adapted from The Conversation Piece: Scenes of fashionable life, London, 2009