[ Kiörboe / The Inundation and The Rescue
The Inundation (1848)
(aka
The Flood)
by
Carl Fredrik Kiörboe
The Rescue (1864?)
(oil on canvas, 28.7" x 36.6")
by
Carl Fredrik Kiörboe
Kiörboe (1799 - 1876) was a Swedish army officer and painter (apparently born in Denmark) who specialized in animal paintings, particularly horses and dogs. He spent most of his adult life living in France.
These two paintings are companion pieces: The Inundation shows a chained Landseer Newfoundland howling on top of a doghouse in a flooded landscape as her puppies seek refuge with her, while The Rescue is the "after" image, with the Newf's chain broken, the remains of her doghouse in front of her, and the puppies (one of whom is nursing) safe and sound.
These two works seem to have acquired a bit of misinformation baggage along the way, and my attempt to clarify that follows.
The Inundation has, over the years, acquired another name: The Flood. That may simply be an alternate (and reasonable) translation of the original Swedish title, Översvämningen, though this work is never referred to as The Flood in any of the 19th-Century materials I have examined while researching these two paintings, so I suspect that "The Flood" is a modern invention.
Some art-related websites list the date of The Inundation as 1850, but that is incorrect. The catalog for an exhibition of art held at the Louvre Museum in Paris in March of 1848 — Explication des Ouvrages de Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture, Gravure et Lithographie des Artistes Vivants, Exposés au Musée National du Louvre — lists two works exhibited by Kiörboe, one of them entitled Chienne de Terre-Neuve enchainée à sa cabane, submergée par une inondation (Newfoundland Dog Chained to Its Kennel, Submerged by a Flood). That is clearly The Inundation. Some of the information below on this page further confirms an exhibition date of 1848, not 1850.
There is some oddness associated with The Rescue as well. While The Inundation was one of Kiörboe's most popular works and received considerable attention in his lifetime, its companion piece, The Rescue, seems to have received very little notice.
I suspect The Rescue was painted well after The Inundation, since Kiörboe did not exhibit the two works together during that initial exhibition of The Inundation in 1848, though I suppose it is not impossible the two paintings were contemporaneous and simply were not both entered at the 1848 exhibits (there was the one exhibit at the Louvre mentioned above, and another in London, mentioned below). Surely The Rescue would have been remarked upon if it were exhibited, for The Inundation captured the attention of a number of reviewers and critics.
Even stranger to me is that The Rescue has somehow acquired an alternate title, and one that doesn't really make much sense. This painting can be found on several art-related websites with the title Landscape with Bitch and Playing Puppies. Given that it is the companion to the very dramatic and very popular The Inundation, a generic and anodyne title such as Landscape with Bitch and Playing Puppies is rather puzzling, as it completely ignores several key elements of the painting. (The fact this title sometimes shows up in Swedish is even more confusing.)
The few references to The Rescue that I have been able to find do suggest it was indeed painted later, for they are from more than a decade after The Inundation was first exhibited.
One of these references is in an article discussing the "Close of the Picture Season" which appeared in the July 30, 1864, issue of The Examiner, a London weekly that ran from 1808 to 1886. This article mentions the "Scandinavian Gallery" which was set up in the Haymarket exhibition space in central London, and in that context refers to
the fine dog pictures by Colonel C. F. Kiorbe, the Inundation perilling chained dogs, a work well known by the excellent line engraving of it, and its companion picture, The Rescue. (488)
(The reviewer mentions three other Kiörboe paintings on display as well.)
Another cultural weekly published in London, The Reader (which ran from 1863 - 1867) also mentions the linked nature of these two paintings in an brief article on "The Scandinavian Gallery, Haymarket" which appeared in its July 16, 1864 issue:
Kiorboe exhibits a duplicate of his well-known picture of "The Inundation," and a companion to it called "The Rescue," in which the Newfoundland bitch and her puppies are represented landed in safety. (81)
The journal Svenska studier (Swedish Studies) also mentions, in 1872, The Rescue (Räddningen) as the "counterpart" ("motstycke") of The Inundation (Översvämningen)
While The Rescue never got the attention of its companion, the following discussions of The Inundation give clear indication of the regard in which that painting was held.
One of the more substantial reviews of this work was published in the April, 1849, issue of New Sporting Magazine, though the review is actually of the just-published print of the work, published by Ackermann (London), rather than the actual painting. The reviewer also notes the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy (London) the previous year.
THE INUNDATION. Ackermann and Co., Strand. — No animal gives so eloquent an expression to the feeling or passion which may excite him as the dog; whether it be joy, grief, ardour of chase, or rage, you see it equally marked in his noble, intellectual countenance. Perhaps the great secret of Landseer's success may be traced home to a full appreciation of this fact — you scarcely ever find a painting of his but in which you might name the feeling as certainly as the breed pourtrayed. From the deer hound, with his head erect and eye fixed "straining in the slips," or stretched at full length by the hill-man's side, to the spoilt child of a lap-dog, snarling and quarrelling with all that approach him, you see the same attention and care in painting up to, as in providing this expression. Nothing but a deep study, and as full a reliance on it, could have ever suggested or ventured such works as "Laying down the Law," and others by which it has been followed. Had the expression not been eminently correct and natural, the idea would have sunk into caricature; while, had this "speaking" part of the picture been omitted or made less of, we should have had dull, heavy groups of dog-painting subjects, that, however good in drawing and anatomy, would be wanting all that Promethian fire which alone could warm them into life and fervour.
Perhaps of the many passions the dog displays so forcibly, none are more forcible than those of sorrow and despondency — the feeling taken by the artist for illustration in the present instance, and of whom we borrow the description of the subject he has selected: "A Newfoundland dog, surrounded by the advancing waters of an inundation, has got on the top of her kennel. One of the pups has reached the mother, under whom she crouches with a moving expression of fear; another is making an effort to climb up beside them; and a third, at a little distance, is striving against the stream. The greatest alarm and terror are evinced by the whole group; but the dog, one of the finest specimens of this noble animal, feeling it impossible to escape, being chained down, is howling in piteous despair. Afar off is seen an inundated village, from which a small boat is advancing through the raging flood, hastening to the rescue." It would be difficult to find a more effective, or, to use the word we were about to, a more dramatic incident than this; and we may go on to say that it would be quite as difficult to have it better treated than it has been by the gentleman who had the fortune to furnish himself with so attractive a theme. Although we have alluded to the great secret of Mr. Landseer's success from the same means being as well employed and as much relied on here, we do not for a moment intend charging any sins of the mere copyist to M. Kiörboe. His style is as original as the idea he has displayed it on; in fact, though more in the picture than the plate, there is evidence enough to show it is not the work of an English artist. Some of our friends may remember it as No. 1 in the hanging of the Academy last year; a large, rather dark-toned piece, which, we think, has been very judiciously lightened or relieved in the engraving. Of the dogs — there were some greyhounds by M. Kiörboe exhibited at the same time — we then said that many of our friends might take a lesson with advantage. Indeed, nothing could be finer painted than the Newfoundland bitch in "The Inundation;" while the pathos of the subject is worked up to in every way with a care and effect well worthy of its excellence as an animal painting.
M. Kiörboe, like his fair countrywoman Jenny Lind, will, we fancy, have no cause to complain of the manner in which his genius is appreciated in this country. The print promises to be eminently popular; or, if it is not, there can be little blame to those by whom he has been supported. The engraving, which, as we have already hinted, we consider in some respects an improvement on the picture, comes from the hand of Davey with a finish and effect that go far to reach "the rising man" we predicted him some two or three years since. Messrs. Ackermann, too, have shown a taste and liberality in the “getting up” or getting out, that makes us rather wonder not to meet them oftener in the field.
The review above alludes to an earlier mention of Kiörboe's painting in Sporting Magazine. Here that earlier mention is, from a discussion, in the June, 1848, issue, of painting exhibitions (being held simultaneously in several venues at the time) in London. Discussing a painting by a "Mr. Barker," the reviewer writes that Mr. Barker "might take a lesson in dog painting, from a foreign artist of the name of Kiorboe, who has a brace of greyhounds on the opposite wall, and a Newfoundland bitch and puppies in the Academy, both much beyond the average of merit." (404)
The Inundation is also reviewed in the March, 1849, issue of The Art-Journal:
The original of this engraving claimed our favourable notice when reviewing the Royal Academy Exhibition of the past year, as a work of great imagination and power. We need scarcely describe the picture, for most of our readers will remember "the Newfoundland Dog and her Pups in danger of being overwhelmed in the flood of waters:" the agonising howl of the mother, and the terrified looks of her young, make a most pathetic appeal to the feelings, — one indeed that would be truly distressing, did not we see, by the approaching boat, that relief is at hand. The engraving well sustains the character of the subject; it is boldly yet carefully executed in every particular. (100)
Another review of Davey's mezzotint appeared in the March, 1849, issue of The Literary Gazette:
EDWIN LANDSEER, look to your canine laurels. In music we know what a Swedish nightingale can do, and now, in another delightful art, we see what a Swedish Snyders can achieve. The subject is replete with interest, and is characterized by much variety and intensness of nature. A fine Newfoundland dog, chained to its house, which has almost become a raft, from the influx of the flood, is howling in maternal agony and despair, as a helpless captive riveted to a miserable fate. Three of its pups are placed in relative degrees of danger; one peeping out from under the mother, another climbing up out of the water upon her outstretched paw, and the third struggling homeward against the stormy wave. The expression in all is exceedingly fine; and never was a dog story better told by the pencil. Must they all perish? We are much interested! No, though in the distance, through the dark, cloudy sky and raging waters, we see a village overwhelmed by the tempest, there is a small boat tagging tuwards the wharf, and our favourites will be saved. The engraver has done justice to the original artist, and executed his task in a capital style of mezzotint; and the engraving must, we think, become very popular, as a companion to some of the pieces by our native compatriot, with whose name we set out, and who never can be surpassed in such subjects. (240)
From The Atheneum of 8 September 1849:
A mezzotint which represents a Newfoundland dog and her family surrounded by the advancing waters of an inundation. Nothing short of great merit can at this hour reconcile us to a class of subject of which the public has had a surfeit. The taste for animal delineation can be readily understood in a country where the sports of the field constitute so large a portion of the pastime of our upper ranks: — and it has been gratified ad nauseam at the hands of some of our best artists. Our print-shop windows supply evidences abundant of this fact — and the money and intelligence expended on such matters within the last ten years have thrown subjects of poetry, history, and romance into the shade. — 'The Inundation' will scarcely, however, we think, be among the publications contributing largely to such an effect. (915)
An engraving of The Inundation by another artist, identified only as "Freeman," was reviewed — or, more accurately, emoted about — in the December, 1850, edition of Magasin Pittoresque, a popular illustrated magazine of culture that ran from 1833 to 1938.
I guess not everyone loved these works, however, as is indicated by this snarky comment in an 1859 book on French painting, L'art dans la rue et l'art au salon (The Art of the Street and the Art of the Salon) by the French historian Eugéne de Buchère de Lepinois:
Quant à M. Kiorboë, il a fini par se noyer avec ses chiens de Terre-Neuve. ("As for Mr. Kiorboë, he finally ended by drowning with his Newfoundland dogs.") (248)
That The Inundation seems to have been Kiörboe's most well-known work is indicated by the fact it was highlighted in several obituaries of Kiörboe, such as this one in The Art Journal of 1876:
This artist — a very clever animal painter — died at Dijon early in January, at the age of seventy-one. He was born at Stockholm, but for a very long period resided in France. In 1844 he obtained a third-class medal in Paris; two years afterwards, a second-class medal; and, in 1860, The Cross of the Legion of Honour. We remember seeing at the Royal Academy in 1848 — the only time we believe Kiorboe ever exhibited anything in England — a large picture called "The Inundation — A Newfoundland Dog and her Pups:" it was a large canvas, hung over the doorway in the first room in the gallery, and represents the poor animal, chained to its kennel, being swept away by the flood of waters; her pups are swimming around her, and the mother, in the agony of despair, howls most piteously. The incident is most pathetically told, and is capitally painted. The picture was subsequently engraved, on a large scale, and published in this country.
The weekly art publication The Academy also noted The Inundation in its obituary of Kiörboe in its September 2, 1876 edition:
Another Scandinavian artist of some notoriety has lately died, C. F. Kiörboe, the animal-painter. He was born in Slesvig in 1800, served in the Swedish army from 1829 to 1846, having, however, from 1840 lived mostly at Paris, where be enjoyed for more than thirty years a very considerable reputation, exhibiting year after year at the Salon. One at least of his works, the Inundation, a hound tied to the roof of a kennel, with her whelps drowning around her, a picture of almost tragical force, has attained popularity all over the world in the shape of little engravings and photography. Kiörboe died at Dijon.
That obituary is attributed to Edmund W. Gosse (1849 – 1928), the noted English poet and cultural critic. Note that Gosse gets some of the details of the picture wrong. The above obituaries, as well as other notices at the time, give conflicting information about the city of Kiörboe's birth — Stockholm, Sweden; and Slesvig, now a city in northern Germany but once part of Denmark — though most modern sources give the city of Kiörboe's birth as Christiansfeld (or Kristansfeld), Denmark. His date of birth, at least in most modern sources I found, is 1799, not 1800.
The important arts journal The Atheneum also noted Kiörboe's passing in its issue of September 16, 1876, though while it mentioned that "He was most successful with dogs" the brief obituary did not mention by name any of his paintings.