Man’s Best Friend – Dogs in Art

‘Every dog has its day’ and today Wendy Hughes Chuck is letting dogs in art off the leash. Wendy writes:  “Man’s Best Friend” has been portrayed in art and written about by poets and writers since time immemorial. The idea for this blog came while on one of my daily walks with Macey, my Labrador.

A perfunctory browse on the Internet shows how often dogs were drawn and carved by artists and have been featured in proverbs, sayings and poems.

Beware of the Dog

Today many dog owners post a sign on their garden gate, probably in jest, which reads “Beware of the dog” but do they know that this expression in Latin, Cave Canem, first appeared in a mosaic in Pompeii? The mosaic shows a leashed domestic dog on the vestibule floor of the House of the Tragic Poet, built in 200 BCE and partly destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in CE79. The mosaic was rediscovered by the archaeologist, Antonio Bonacci in 1874. The figure of the dog served as protection over the private quarters of the 2nd century BCE Roman home, one of the most famous at the site, thanks to its elaborate mosaic floors and frescoes depicting scenes from Greek mythology. Following years of neglect, with accumulating mud and dirt, the mosaic has been gradually cleaned and it is now on display for the public to admire, protected beneath a transparent cover.

The NGV’s Chinese collection contains a domestic dog almost as old as the one in Pompeii. It is an earthenware dog with coloured pigments from the Six Dynasties (Han) period (222CE-589CE) acquired via the Felton Bequest in 1947. The dog is standing, head held high, baring its teeth, tail up and tightly curled over its back and wearing a collar and harness. The NGV has several other earthenware sculptures of dogs including one from the Tang Dynasty of a man holding a pet dog. This is clearly a much-loved pet and not a ferocious guard dog.

Friend to the rich and the poor

The dog has been a friend to kings and presidents, rich and poor men alike. The quotes that follow probably say more about the nature of man than of his dog.

“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” said US President Harry Truman. (Note: the current President is the only one in recent times who chose not to have a dog).

“The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs,” said
Charles de Gaulle, former French President.

 “Let sleeping dogs lie,” was the wise advice of the first British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole.

The homeless Greek philosopher, Diogenes, famous for living in a barrel, was portrayed in 1860 by the French artist, Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), communing with a group of scholarly looking dogs. In Gerome’s painting, Diogenes is in his clay pot or barrel, lighting a lamp in the middle of the day to “search for an honest man.” Dogs surround him, watching attentively like students. According to Diogenes it is humans who should study and learn from dogs. The term ‘cynic’ derives from the Greek word for ‘dog-like’, an idea that Diogenes agreed with.

The Queen’s affection for her corgis, dorgis and labradors is well-known but it seems it has always been thus for members of the royal family. In this painting by the favourite court painter Anthony Van Dyck which hangs in the Queen’s Gallery at Windsor Castle, we see King Charles I’s five eldest children together with a giant dog who sits patiently and provides both physical and moral support to the young Charles II, who is patting the dog.

The poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) had a favourite Great Dane he called Bounce. If people grow to look like their dogs maybe this was wishful thinking on Pope’s part as he stood only 137 centimetres tall. When Bounce produced a litter of puppies, Pope gave one to his friend the Prince of Wales (Prince Frederick, son of George II) and had this epigram engraved on the pup’s collar: I am his Highness’ dog at Kew Pray, tell me sir, whose dog are you? The epigram reflects Pope’s belief in the universality of servile sycophancy. Although the epigram has gone down in history, unfortunately I could not find an image of the dog in question or his collar. Above is a portrait of his owner, the Prince of Wales.

Franz Marc’s 1910-11 painting of his Siberian Shepherd dog Russi, Dog Lying in the Snow, was voted the most popular painting in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt in 2008. This beautiful painting was shown at the Museum Melbourne Winter Masterpieces Exhibition at the NGV in 2010 in ‘European Masters: Städel Museum’. Marc loved painting animals as he felt they were pure and closer to God. He described man as “ugly”. The German expressionist painter has simplified the shape and form of the dog.

The 18^th century galleries at the NGV feature several dogs and their owners

There are two dogs in Giambattista Tiepolo’s Banquet of Cleopatra. A tiny lapdog sits on Cleopatra’s lap and the larger Italian greyhound dog, bottom right, turns his head to watch the scene as Cleopatra drops her priceless pearl earring into a glass of vinegar in order to steal a march on Mark Antony. According to conservators John Payne and Carl Villis, the greyhound is modelled on a hound painted by Veronese in his Esther being led to Ahasuerus which may be viewed in the Uffizi in Florence. X-radiographs reveal that Tiepolo tried out two other positions for the dog’s tail (which is out of range in the Uffizi picture) before settling on the position we see in the painting.

 Jacopo Amigoni’s The Singer Farinelli and Friends includes Farinelli’s greyhound in the group as one of the friends. The dog’s collar bears the initials CBF for the singer’s full name, Carlo Farinelli Broschi.  According to curators Ted Gott and Laurie Benson, X-radiographs reveal that Amigoni once painted the dog in a much higher position than it appears in the finished work. The dog now holds its head quite low in a pose that suggests it senses the despair of the departing friends. The sheet music held by the castrato Farinelli and Teresa Castellini, the prima donna of the Madrid Opera, bears the title La Partenza (The Parting). The group of singers together with Abbate Metastasio, the librettist, were sad to be splitting up as they were soon to leave Madrid. 

This 1767 painting of an aristocratic young Englishman, Sir Sampson Gideon, in Rome during his grand tour of the continent before settling down to an aristocratic way of life in England as a land owner and Member of Parliament, tells us that wealthy young travellers were often accompanied by their pet dogs, in this case a whippet. Fiancées, on the other hand,stayed at home and the young man had to content himself with carrying a miniature painting of his lady love, Maria Wilmot. 

In Sir Thomas Gainsborough’s  painting (1776-1780) of the Anglo-Irish military officer Richard St George Mansergh St. George, the officer’s dog plays a major role not only as the faithful friend of the soldier departing to fight a losing battle in the American War of Independence but also in the composition of the picture. Gainsborough uses the dog’s position in the painting to complete the diagonal composition of the painting, leaving space on the left for St George’s ship and a threatening sea and sky. The dog is gazing up sadly at his departing master.

The caricaturist and book illustrator for Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank (1792-1878) whose work Michael Schwarz covered in detail in his August 1 blogpost, Tom and Jerry, illustrated the well-known saying “It’s raining cats and dogs” in his 1820 etching which was later hand coloured: Very unpleasant weather or the old saying: Raining cats, dogs and pitchforks”.

Man’s best friend has ambled over to NGVA

Here we see Wik-Alkan/Wik-Ngathan artist from Aurukun, Garry Namponan’s splendid 2004 carving of Ku (a camp dog) painted in earth pigments and synthetic polymer paint on milkwood. Garry’s father Angus is also a carver as are several of his brothers.

Latje Latje artist Trevor Turbo Brown (1967-2017) took a different approach, identifying with a dingo in his painting, I am the dingo spirit (2015). Turbo grew up in Mildura and spent his early teenage years mostly living homeless and relating more to the wild animals he knew than human beings. It wasn’t until he was 15, homeless and sleeping under houses and with dogs to keep warm, that a local police sergeant stepped in to try to help. The officer introduced Turbo to Uncle Herb Patten and his wife Aunty Bunta, who ran a hostel and college for Aboriginal youths in Melbourne.He painted many animals, winning the Deadly Arts Award, Victoria’s major Aboriginal art prize in 2012. Several of his works depict his beloved dingoes, including Dingo Meeting, 2007 and Getting the photos taken by the tourists, 2007. “When I paint I feel like I’m in the Dreamtime and can see all the animals and birds that live there,” he told his manager.

No dog can be seen in Emily Kngwarreye’s eight-metre black and white masterpiece of 1995 painted the year before her death, aged 86. And yet we know her little dog was with her while she painted the white yam tubers twisting to and fro in the dark earth as it has left its paw marks on the surface of the painting while scurrying across the wet paint.  It is part of the beauty of the work that Emily did not feel it necessary to remove the traces of her dog’s paws. 

Artists painting their dogs

It is not surprising that so many artists were inspired to feature their dogs in their work. The NGV possesses a self-portrait of Fred Williams with his dog, a monotype with pen and brush and ink drawn in 1949.  It was given to the NGV by Dr Joseph Brown in 1983 but is not currently on display.

Last year the NGV featured an exhibition of photographs by the American photographer William Wegman, who has devoted his career to photographing several generations of his pet Weimaraners. The exhibition “Being Human” 2018-19, said a lot more about human beings than about dogs as Wegman photographed his slinky grey Weimaraners in costumes ranging from cowboy outfits to glamorous Hollywood star gowns and, as seen here, in the nude.  The dogs also posed in works illustrating specific contemporary art movements. Wegman’s first dog was Man Ray, named after his most admired modern artist. He was followed by Fay Ray and her puppies, Chundo, Battina and Crooky, all of whom had their own individual style. Wegman photographed his dogs using large format Polaroid until the company went bankrupt and then switched to digital format.

German born, British artist Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund, often used dogs in his portraits painting them lying alongside his human subjects. Freud’s own whippets, Pluto and Eli, also appear as the main subjects of some paintings. The artist explained his love of working with dogs like this: “I am impressed by their lack of arrogance, their ready eagerness, their animal pragmatism.”

David Hockney made many paintings of his beloved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie, even dedicating an entire book of 40 paintings to his dogs. David Hockney’s Dog Days was published in 1998. I wonder which dog is pictured on the right?

Andy Warhol and his mother Julia, always had cats. In 1973 he was persuaded to get a dog, a dark brown dachshund puppy called Archie. He became besotted and even refused to travel overseas as it would mean leaving Archie behind or placing him in quarantine for six months. He also had a stuffed Great Dane called Cecil at his studio whom he preferred to sketch as it was easier to draw than a moving live dog.

The American artist Jeff Koons (1955 –  ) has created dogs and other animals out of inflated twisted balloons. He built his giant 12.4m puppy out of flowers. The puppy was first exhibited at the Festival of Sydney in 1995 as a Kaldor Art Project outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. It has found a permanent home outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in Spain.

I hope you have enjoyed this round-up of just a few of the many arty dogs and what they say about their owners and about artists.

Thank you to Wendy for reminding us of the important role that dogs have played in our lives. As Duane Chapman said: ‘Dog is God spelled backward’!