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ACTIVITIES BASED ON FIVE PAINTINGS

The Stonebreaker and His Daughter

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, 'The Stonebreaker and His Daughter', 1830. Museum no. 508-1882

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, 'The Stonebreaker and His Daughter', 1830. Museum no. 508-1882 (click image for larger version)

  • Before telling your students the title of the painting, ask them what they think the relationship is between the two people in the painting. How has the artist linked them visually? How are they different?
  • What do you think the man is thinking and feeling? What about the girl?
  • What time of day do you think it is? What has she brought him in the basket?
  • On a rock beside the stonebreaker, there is a snuffbox made from a ram's horn. What is snuff? Why would the stonebreaker carry some with him?
  • What kind of job was stonebreaking? Was it an easy job? Are there any jobs like it today?
  • What can this painting tell you about the life of a 19th-century working man? How does it compare with the life of adults you know?
  • What can you see in the background? Do you think the artist is painting a scene from real life? Is the setting an important part of the painting? Does it affect the way you look at the characters?
  • How would this picture compare with a picture of life in the industrial cities at the time?
  • Why do you think the picture was painted? What was the artist's intention? Do you think the style and subject were affected by the buyer's taste and preferences?
  • Would the owner of this painting have been rich or poor? How might that affect how they see the stonebreaker? How do you feel towards him?
  • Look at the picture frame. Do you think it suits the painting? Would you use this kind of frame? Why?

Landseer went to the Royal Academy at the very young age of thirteen. He became an associate of the RA in 1826 at the age of twenty-four - the youngest age permitted by the rules of the Academy. He was made Royal Academician in 1831 and knighted in 1851. His early career predates the reign of Queen Victoria, but her patronage established his reputation and popularity. It was Landseer who designed the bronze lions around the foot of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.

The artist specialised in pictures of animals and people in everyday situations, as well as scenes of Scotland - Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were very attached to the life and landscape of the Highlands. Indeed, this painting is probably set in Scotland. Landseer made a number of trips there and helped to set the trend for Highland scenes.

Like Webster's Contrary Winds, this painting is a sentimentalised view of the working poor. It reflects the early 19th-century moral theme of happy domesticity in rural poverty (represented here by the cottages with chimneys smoking in the background).  People, especially those who were not aware of the harsh reality of rural life, liked to think that the poor led simple, upright lives. The poet Robert Burns wrote, 'The honest man, though e'er sae poor, is king o' men for a 'that'.

The central figure of the weather-beaten labourer, surrounded by fragments of granite, is the earliest of several sympathetic depictions by various artists of this backbreaking and poorly paid work. Despite industrialisation, the late 18th- and early 19th-century improvements to roads in England and Scotland still required hard manual labour by individuals such as stonebreakers and 'navvies'.

Here, the artist contrasts the innocence and vitality of youth with the exhaustion of the older man. The girl is probably bringing her father his lunch. The stonebreaker has a rough-haired terrier for company, and there is some snuff (powdered tobacco) beside him, which he would probably have taken while resting from his work.