ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that images can offer alternatives to official anthropocentric histories. It proposes that visual culture is an important but often overlooked resource in the writing of human–animal histories. The chapter also argues that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many working in animal advocacy reproduced Edwin Landseer's paintings in their campaigns. It focuses on two specific examples of artworks that were singled out in the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals's (RSPCA) review of the 1887 Royal Academy exhibition: Nightingale's Welcome Morsels and Edmund Caldwell's For the Safety of the Public. Images of animals can be recontextualised to reflect and contemporary debates about how animals should be treated. Landseer's well-known painting, A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society serves as a good example. Caldwell's picture entitled For the Safety of the Public was also mentioned in the RSPCA review of the annual Royal Academy exhibition.
