Enfilade

Jean-Jacques Bachelier, Dog of the Havana Breed, detail, 1768, oil on canvas, 70 × 91 cm
(The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, BM 913)

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For anyone celebrating, a very happy National Dog Day to you and yours! Now on at The Wallace Collection:

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney
The Wallace Collection, London, 29 March — 15 October 2023

The exhibition Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney explores our devotion to four-legged friends across the centuries. Through carefully selected paintings, sculptures, drawings, works of art and even taxidermy, the exhibition highlights the unique bond between humans and their canine companions. Dog portraiture developed as an artistic genre contemporaneously with its human counterpart—dogs are represented in the earliest cave paintings alongside humans—and it flourished, particularly in Britain, from the 17th century onwards. More than any other nationality perhaps, the British have both commissioned and collected portraits of dogs. Bringing over 50 works of art to Hertford House, Portraits of Dogs presents a broad range of portraiture showing dogs in all their different shapes and sizes, with each painter or sculptor challenging themselves how best to represent mankind’s most faithful and fearless friend.

From Giles:

Xavier Bray and Bruce Fogle, Faithful and Fearless: Portraits of Dogs (London: Giles, 2021), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1913875015, £25 / $35.

Throughout history, dogs and humans have had a special relationship based on trust, loyalty, and friendship—a relationship frequently immortalised in art. Faithful and Fearless: Portraits of Dogs features 50 works of art depicting the bond between people and their beloved pet—from members of the British Royal Family, to artists themselves. Organised in a series of thematically grouped sections—the dog as hero, as a companion to royals, aristocrats and artists, or as an allegory of the human condition—the book explores the canine portrait in its many guises and features dogs belonging to many celebrated figures, including Queen Victoria’s Tilco, Lucian Freud’s Pluto, and David Hockney’s portraits of his dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie. The pieces are all drawn from major British collections including the Royal Collection, the V&A, Tate Britain, the British Museum, and a wealth of regional museums and private collections. In “A Vet’s Point of View,” renowned clinical veterinarian Bruce Fogle examines the many reasons for the extraordinary bond between dogs and their owners. At a time of rising dog ownership, this enchanting volume is a welcome reminder of our devotion to our four-legged friends.

c o n t e n t s

Director’s Foreword

Faithful and Fearless: Portraits of Dogs by Xavier Bray

Catalogue: Introduction
• The Aristocratic Dog
• The Royal Dog
• Kylin and AhCum: Two Pekinese
• The Artist’s Dog
• The Allegorical Dog
• The Heroic Dog
• The Dog Immortal
• Until Death

A Vet’s Point of View by Bruce Fogle

Notes
Index
Photo credits