The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner

Many critics consider this art (by Sir Edwin Landseer) as maudlin, mawkish, even lachrymose.

[click to enlarge]

And yet I consider it to be, at minimum, a masterpiece of indirect storytelling, in addition to composition, technique, light, shading, and etc. Consider how much is said but with so little:
● Someone has died (by unknown circumstances),
● It seems noone has come to the funeral (the coffin is not yet in the ground) thus confirming a lonely existence, and
● The shepherd's dog -- likely the sole company for each other -- now misses his master. (One very subtle trick Landseer uses well is to curl inwards the dog's front right paw. Not to wax anthropomorphic, but this 'action' is among those that endears dogs to us humans. If instead Landseer had painted the dog sitting four-squarely, the dog's -- and our -- sense of loss would be missing. Techniques such as this one illustrate how art becomes Art, even a masterpiece.)

So from this scene of a funeral, our thoughts wander all the way from, "What happened?" to "What of the dog now?"

Anyone want to take this dog home...?