*The Monarch of the Glen,* by Sir Edwin Landseer.

In the Land of the Green Laird

A topsy-turvy battle has broken out in Scotland between billionaire environmentalists, who want to cull thousands of deer, and deer-hunting locals, who’d like to see them thrive

By Patrick Galbraith

In 1851, Sir Edwin Landseer, a favorite artist of Queen Victoria’s, painted a huge oil-on-canvas of an impossibly large stag set against the backdrop of a rocky, fog-swept Highland landscape. The beast is far bigger than any red deer you’d find in Scotland, and the wild mountains come straight out of Tolkien. The Monarch of the Glen is Scotland as imagined by a Victorian sportsman.

The painting was part of a culture that was being created around the pursuit of red-deer stags. In the early 19th century, there were only 6 hunting estates in Scotland, large areas set aside for the pursuit of grouse and deer, but by 1900 there were roughly 150, covering well over two million acres of heather, woodland, and rocky scree.