Leonberger University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland In the 1830s, Heinrich Essig, a dog breeder and seller and mayor of the town of Leonberg near Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, claimed to have created the Leonberger by crossing a female Landseer Newfoundland with a "barry" male from the Great St. Bernard Hospice and Monastery (which would later create the Saint Bernard breed). Later, according to Essig, a Pyrenean Mountain Dog was added, resulting in very large dogs with the long, white coats that were the fashion for the time, and pleasant temperament. The first dogs registered as Leonbergers were born in 1846 and
Newfoundland dog in 1785, lived at Edgbaston Hall, Birmingham between 1786 and 1799. While there, he bred Newfoundland Dogs. There is very little else on his experiments with these dogs. His daughter Charlotte married a Beriah Botfield and they had a painting in Norton Hall by Samuel Cox of Daventry painted about 1830-1840 called "Portrait of Lion, a Newfoundland Dog, and Juba, a Pug Dog of Mrs. Botfield's. This hung in the north front of Norton Hall. This painting would have been made around the same time that Landseer painted his portrait of Lion, the Newfoundland Dog. (See 'Catalogue of Pictures in