After working under B.R. Haydon, who encouraged him to study anatomy, in 1816 Landseer was formally admitted to the Royal Academy schools, where he stayed for about three years. By 1817, at the age of fourteen, he was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy's annual exhibitions as well as at the Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolor. At the precociously young age of twenty-four he was elected as an Associate of The Royal Academy. In 1831 he was elected to full membership.

By his early twenties Landseer was an established artist with a quickly developing roster of patrons. And while he is most closely associated with Queen Victoria, by the 1820's Landseer was well-known for his portraits of animals and children among a small but important group of aristocratic patrons.

It was in 1836 that the first breed most closely associated with the Queen was painted by the young Edwin Landseer. Dash (illustration 3-126) depicts the young princess' favorite pet, a King Charles Spaniel. Dash was a black and white dog with tan eyebrows, or what is now known a the tri-color or Prince Charles, in distinction from the black and tan King Charles, red and white or lemon and white Blenheim and the Ruby, which were all recognized varieties in 1839.

The painting had been commissioned by the Princess' mother the Duchess of Kent for Victoria's 17th birthday on May 24, 1836, just one year before Victoria was to ascend the throne. She was very taken with the little painting and for Landseer it was to mark the beginning of his long and happy relationship with the royal family.

The history of the King Charles Spaniel (see chapter 2) is for most rather confusing, in no small part due to the nomenclature for the breed. In England today, for instance, the dog which looks most like the portrait of Dash is known as The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, yet it is a relatively new breed, separated from the King Charles Spaniel some seventy years ago. The King Charles Spaniel, (in America, known as the English Toy Spaniel) which today is a much smaller dog with a flatter muzzle, is actually the elder breed of the two. It derives its name from the dog's favored status in the court of King Charles II.

The breed known in England as the King Charles Spaniel is an old and venerable one, tracing its ancestry back for at least three hundred years. What was originally a small pet spaniel with a definite muzzle (see Dash illustration 3-126) was in the nineteenth century selectively bred to become a much smaller dog. There are several references to Dash in the Queen's journals and when the pet died in 1840, she wrote that "I was so fond of the poor little fellow and he was so attached to me I had him since the beginning of February 1833."

Dash was buried in the gardens of Adelaide Lodge with the following touching epitaph: "Here lies DASH, The Favorite Spaniel of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, By whose command this Memorial was Erected. He died on the 20th December, 1840, in his 9th year.

His attachment was without selfishness,
His playfulness without malice,
His fidelity without deceit.

READER, if you would live beloved and die regretted, profit by the example of DASH"