Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge with 'Nelson', a Newfoundland Dog (c. 1839)
by
Sir Edwin Landseer
Princess Mary Adelaide (1833 - 1897) was the youngest daughter of Prince Adolphus, the Duke of Cambridge, who was the youngest son of King George III (reigned 1760 - 1820). Princess Mary spent much of her youth in Germany, where her father served as a viceroy. She became, alas, known primarily for her fondness for high living and good food, eventually earning the nickname "Fat Mary." One of her daughters became the wife of King George V (reigned 1910 - 1936), who was the grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II — making the little girl pictured here a great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning monarch in British history (reigned 1952 - 2022), and the great-great-grandmother of King Charles III (reign 2022 - ).
The exhibiton of this work at the Royal Academy was noted by The New Sporting Magazine (not to be confused with the older Sporting Magazine) in its June 1839 issue:
This, as far as the dog is concerned, is a charming picture. And, but that the child is dressed too much up to the Princess, there could be no objection to the picture as a whole. The Newfoundland, in a sitting posture, is as high as the little girl: and he holds, with that wise look, which dogs only possess, — a bit of biscuit on his nose, waiting for the command to snap at it. The arrangement has been well conceived, but, as Sir Giles Overreach, says, "the offence is rank!" (429)
A comprehensively negative review of the painting was published in Gentleman's Magazine for July, 1839:
Princess Mary of Cambridge, and a favourite Newfoundland Dog. Mr. Landseer is excellent in his animals, but let him not lend too ready an ear to those who would persuade him that he at all approaches SNYDERS. The comparison is ridiculous. We are by no means sure he equals WARD — we mean the Ward of ten or fifteen years back. In this artist there was all the character, and less of the flimsiness of Landseer. The dog in this performance is a repetition of the numerous representations of the same subject, which the latter has contributed to our exhibitions, and so in fact is the child — the one being clever, the other being positively bad. (67)
"Nelson," it should be noted, was a popular name for Newfoundland dogs in the early 19th Century, commemorating as it does the British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died in the Battle of Trafalgar (October 1805), a decisive defeat of Napoleon Buonaparte's naval forces. See the images by George Stubbs and Peter Stroehling here at The Cultured Newf. The dog pictured here is the same Nelson the Newfoundland who is pictured in Landseer's 1835 painting Prince George's Favourites, also discussed here at The Cultured Newf.