Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

It's a snide reference to goings-on at Blandings Castle.

Quoting from the suspect pages of Wikipedia:

"Lister's mother was a strongwoman on the music hall stage, and his
father a sporting journalist. His uncle owned the "Mulberry Tree" inn
outside Oxford, which Freddie Threepwood spent much time in as a
student (it was in this period that he befriended Blister), and which
Lister later inherits. Both Freddie and his uncle Galahad, Lister's
godfather, support Lister in his wooing of Prudence; when their
planned elopement is scuppered by Prudence's mother, Lister makes his
way to Blandings, under the name of "Messmore Breamworthy", on a
commission to paint the portrait of Empress of Blandings. He later
poses as a gardener, wearing an impressive false beard provided by
Galahad's friend "Fruity" Biffen, and later still takes on the name of
Landseer in yet another attempt to be near Prudence by painting the
pig. At Prudence's insistence, he plans to give up art to run the
Mulberry Tree, but needs investment to modernise the place."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Minor_characters_in_the_Blandings_stories>

The deformed sow by Landseer is in fact the Empress of Blandings by
Blister, that is to say Bill Lister.
--
franzi

The Internet may be (at present) the wrong place to look.
Canonical titles for pictures by defunct artists are a
scholarly topic, likely to have been published only in
definitive catalogues by scholars.  An academic
library is the likelier place to find this for Duerer.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Albrecht-D%C3%BCrer-deformed-Landser-Poster/dp/B
0028B5WGG

I looked in Google Books to see when this first occurred, but
unfortunately it said:

   No results found for "The sow deformed by Landser".

and also

   No results found for "deformed by Landser"

More perplexing, it couldn't find any for "deformed Landser" either.

What it did show were citations containing:

A deformed sow at Landser
the Miraculous Pig of Landser
the deformed pig of Landser
the Deformed sow of Landser
Durer's Great Sow of Landser
a sow with two bodies at Landser
the Landser sow

So there's no historical precedent.

One book says Durer's title was "Die wunderbare sou zu Landser im
Sundgau," so it's not as if there was a preposition resembling "by"
(like there is in Dutch, most confusing!)

Searching the web, as you did, turns up only 11, half of which refer to
the exact Amazon poster you mention. I think this must be a recent
copycat mistake. "Deformed Landser sow" gets 47 (even though that
doesn't turn up historically either.)

I think if you sent a note to Amazon, they would at least change the
"by" to "of".