Why the Trafalgar Square lions have no whiskers

The bronze lions beneath Nelson’s Column have no projecting whiskers. How do you cast a hair in solid metal?

Writing in 1867, Frank Buckland defended that omission. A lion’s fine, flexible whiskers would be difficult to represent in bronze; wire substitutes, he thought, would look absurd.

The heavy-looking paws raised the same problem. Fur gives a living limb a soft edge. Cast that outline in a solid material, and it can look clumsy. Buckland had seen the effect in his own plaster cast of a hare.

This is Buckland’s explanation, rather than Landseer’s recorded reasoning: the material helps explain what the sculpture leaves out.