Famous dog paintings: 14 masterworks every dog lover should know
From a Renaissance prince's hound to Landseer's mourning collie, these are the dogs great painters could not leave out, and what their pictures say about the people who loved them.
Dogs have sat beside kings, slept at the feet of saints and stared out of more portraits than most of the people who commissioned them. For centuries a painter added a dog to say something about the sitter: that he was loyal, or noble, or rich enough to hunt. Then, slowly, the dog became the point of the picture.
These are fourteen of the most famous dog paintings in Western art, from a Florentine duke's hound in 1531 to Sargent's little Yorkshire terrier in 1882. Each is restored from its museum scan, and each can hang on your wall or open as a card this Christmas.
The dog as a coat of arms
In Renaissance and Baroque portraits a dog was rarely just a pet. A hound meant hunting, and hunting meant land and rank. A small dog in a lady's lap stood for fidelity, from the Latin fidus, faithful, which much later gave dogs the name Fido. Painters placed dogs where a modern photographer would place a logo: as a quiet sign of who the sitter was.
1. Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere
Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere, 1531. Palazzo Pitti, Florence.
Bronzino painted the heir to the duchy of Urbino in armour, the uniform of a prince, and let his hand rest on the head of his great dog. The dog looks out of the shadow almost as steadily as its master. Guidobaldo is said to have insisted that it be included, and it is the warmest thing in a cold, splendid picture.
2. Boy with a Greyhound
Paolo Veronese, Boy with a Greyhound, possibly 1570s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Greyhounds were the aristocrats of the dog world, bred for speed and kept by people who did not need to work. Veronese's greyhound is nearly as tall as the boy, and they pose together like two members of the same family. The dog's long, careful profile is painted with as much attention as the embroidered sleeve.
3. The Five Eldest Children of Charles I
Anthony van Dyck, The Five Eldest Children of Charles I, 1637. Royal Collection.
The future Charles II, aged seven, rests his hand on a mastiff that is bigger than he is: a royal heir shown taming strength. In the corner sits a little toy spaniel, the breed Charles would make so fashionable that it still carries his name. Van Dyck painted it for the king's breakfast room at Whitehall.
When the dog became the sitter
In eighteenth-century Britain, owners began to commission portraits of their dogs alone, with no person in the frame. Painters who had made their names with dukes and duchesses now turned the same skill on spaniels, poodles and hunters, and the dog portrait became a genre of its own.
4. Pomeranian Bitch and Puppy
Thomas Gainsborough, Pomeranian Bitch and Puppy, c. 1777. Tate, London.
Gainsborough is thought to have painted these two for his friend the musician Karl Friedrich Abel, and he gave them the full treatment of a society portrait: a romantic wooded setting and a mother who sits like a duchess. Pomeranians were much larger then than they are today. Look at the fur, laid on in quick, feathery strokes that almost seem to move.
5. White Poodle in a Punt
George Stubbs, White Poodle in a Punt, c. 1780. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Stubbs knew animal anatomy better than any painter of his age; he had spent eighteen months dissecting horses for a book. Here the same precision serves a poodle standing on a punt, a reminder that poodles began as water dogs, bred to fetch from rivers. The dog stands sideways like a champion in a show ring.
Landseer's century
No one did more for the dog in art than Edwin Landseer. Queen Victoria collected his work, his prints hung in ordinary homes across Britain, and his dogs were given human feelings: grief, pride, patience, mischief. Critics have sometimes called it sentimental. The public never cared.
6. The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner
Edwin Landseer, The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, 1837. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
A sheepdog lies with its head on its master's coffin. There are no mourners but the dog. The critic John Ruskin called it one of the most perfect poems or pictures of its time, and it is still one of the most famous images of loyalty ever painted.
7. Dignity and Impudence
Edwin Landseer, Dignity and Impudence, 1839. Tate, London.
A grave bloodhound and a cheeky West Highland terrier share one kennel. Both belonged to Landseer's friend Jacob Bell, who later gave the picture to the nation. The joke is in the title, and in the terrier's bright little face, which steals the picture from its much bigger neighbour.
8. Eos
Edwin Landseer, Eos, 1841. Royal Collection.
Eos was Prince Albert's greyhound, and Queen Victoria commissioned this portrait as a Christmas present for him in 1841. Landseer placed her beside her master's hat and gloves, as if she were waiting for him to come back. It may be the most elegant Christmas gift in the Royal Collection.
Painters and their own dogs
By the nineteenth century, painters were painting the dogs they lived with. These pictures are more intimate than any commission: the artist's own spaniel at the studio door, a family dog in the garden, a friend's terrier held up to the light.
9. Self-Portrait with a Black Dog
Gustave Courbet, Self-Portrait with a Black Dog, 1842. Petit Palais, Paris.
Courbet painted himself at twenty-three with his spaniel, and this was the first picture the Paris Salon ever accepted from him, in 1844. He and the dog wear the same black, sit in the same easy way and look at us with the same confidence. It is a portrait of a friendship.
10. Brizo, a Shepherd's Dog
Rosa Bonheur, Brizo, a Shepherd's Dog, 1864. Wallace Collection, London.
Rosa Bonheur was the most celebrated animal painter of her day, and the first woman awarded the Legion of Honour for her art. Brizo fills the whole canvas: no setting, no story, just a working dog's face and every strand of its rough coat. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to reach out and touch the fur.
11. A King Charles Spaniel
Édouard Manet, A King Charles Spaniel, c. 1866. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Two hundred years after van Dyck, the little royal spaniel had become a Paris lap dog. Manet painted it on a cushion with its ball, in loose, quick strokes, and the dog looks out with the slightly anxious dignity every owner of the breed will recognise.
12. Fidelity
Briton Rivière, Fidelity, 1869. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
A young man sits in a prison cell, his head in his hands. Only his dog has come. Rivière was a Victorian specialist in animals with feelings, and here the dog's patient, upturned face says everything the man cannot.
13. The Artist's Dog Flèche
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Artist's Dog Flèche, c. 1881. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Long before the dance halls of Montmartre, the teenage Toulouse-Lautrec painted his family's dogs and horses. Flèche, French for arrow, sits under a tree in quick, sure strokes. It is a young artist practising on someone who would sit still for him.
14. Miss Beatrice Townsend
John Singer Sargent, Miss Beatrice Townsend, 1882. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Sargent painted Beatrice holding her Yorkshire terrier, and the dog's silver and tan coat glows against her black dress. The two of them look out at us together. It is the kind of portrait families still want: a child, a dog and the bond between them, painted so that it lasts.
Common questions
What is the most famous dog painting?
In the nineteenth century the most reproduced dog pictures in the world were Edwin Landseer's, above all The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner and Dignity and Impudence. In the United States, C. M. Coolidge's series of dogs playing poker is probably the best known today, though it was made as advertising.
Who is the most famous painter of dogs?
Sir Edwin Landseer, Queen Victoria's favourite animal painter. George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, Rosa Bonheur and Briton Rivière are close behind.
Why are there dogs in old portraits?
A dog told you something about the sitter. Hunting dogs such as greyhounds and hounds stood for rank and land; small lap dogs stood for loyalty and faithfulness in marriage. Later, painters included dogs simply because their owners loved them.
Can I have my own dog painted in the style of these works?
Yes. Fable makes a portrait of your dog from a photo in the manner of an old master, like our Presence style. The preview is free, and the finished portrait can be printed or sent as a card.
Every painting here is restored from its museum scan and printed to order. If one of them reminds you of a dog at home, send it as a card this Christmas from Fable Cards, or turn your own dog into a portrait in the same spirit with the Presence style.