Not All Dogs Are Created Equal

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney -- now that's a very good notion for an exhibition in dog-loving Britain. In reality, however....

The Wallace Collection in London has borrowed more than 50 works to put its idea into practice. Unfortunately, a good quarter of those are by Sir Edwin Landseer. So, if you really like twee, gooey, unsubtle 19th-century paintings of dogs pretending to be people or populating Queen Victoria's sitting room, you'll love it. Now, it's not as if Landseer -- creator of The Monarch of the Glen -- wasn't a highly skilled artist with a deep understanding of animal anatomy and behaviour. It's just that he produced loads of mawkish kitsch, presumably because that was what his sentimental Victorian patrons wanted. And there are a dozen of those Landseers here, coming at you round every corner. 

But then there's also this Landseer: A Saluki Dog. 

The Saluki, prized by the hunters of the Middle East, with a long history (the regal-looking animal depicted prompted us to look them up and learn more about the breed). Such an elegant, noble dog, and such an elegant, straightforward painting. This is what Landseer could do at his best. Perhaps as good as George Stubbs. 

Stubbs, with some claim to be the finest of all painters of animals, didn't do sentimental. If you wanted your prize racehorse, he could render it monumentally -- like Whistlejacket. Or indeed, your prize foxhound, such as Ringwood. Commissioned by his owner, the 1st Baron Yarborough, a celebrated member of the Brocklesby Hunt in Lincolnshire, the dog is depicted punningly alongside some foxgloves.

This is the dog raised to the status of the champion racehorse, and on a big canvas, because, as Martin Postle of the Paul Mellon Centre explains on the accompanying audioguide, Ringwood played a major role in establishing the foxhound as a breed. It seems that foxhound bloodlines, for those in the know, are as important as racehorse bloodlines. 

There are three other Stubbs paintings in this show, and naturally they're among the highlights. Ringwood is in the first room, but the first dogs you see are these two, around two millennia old, and making something of a nonsense of the title of a show that's supposed to start with Gainsborough.  

One of these marble greyhound-like dogs is nibbling the ear of the other, and they seem remarkably well-observed. Discovered near Rome, the sculpture, which is in excellent condition, has been in the British Museum since 1805. As Mary Beard, now the go-to-authority on all things Roman, observes on the audioguide, the work seems to speak of the Romans already embracing the idea of the dog as man's best friend. 

Another intriguing pre-Gainsborough work in the first room is this one -- A Dog Lying on a Ledge -- from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It's not known which Italian or Spanish artist painted it, but it was ascribed in the past to both Velázquez and Zurbarán.

Apparently a street dog, it's an animal that looks as if it may be unwell. Some critics have even suggested it might be dead. There's no gushy sentimentality in this picture.... but wonderful detail.

After the first room, things go downhill for a bit, what with all those Landseers, and a rather too extensive section on royal dogs, including nine or so drawings and etchings by Victoria and Albert of the 700 dogs the Queen owned over her lifetime. Victorian animal art didn't have to be quite so twee, as we saw in a show late last year at the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth, now on at Southampton City Art Gallery. The curators could surely have rustled up something more along the lines of The Dogs' Home by Walter Hunt with its less laboured social commentary. 

Mind you, the 18th century could do light and fluffy as well, in a different way. Jean-Jacques Bachelier's Dog of the Havana Breed really is the epitome of the Rococo pooch. 

 

We were instantly reminded of Girl with Dog, that very naughty work of Rococo titillation by Fragonard, which we saw recently in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. 

Happily, the Wallace exhibition perks up just before the end, with paintings by two of the most celebrated of recent British artists. Lucian Freud was fascinated by dogs, and he wished his human sitters could be as natural and as at ease as his whippet, Pluto. His portrait of Pluto is a very immediate one, as you might expect. 

Freud's sense of loss when the dog died in 2003 is shown by his small canvas of Pluto's Grave, which must have marked a rare painting excursion outside the studio in his late career. 

And then there's David Hockney and his dachshunds -- a whole room devoted to them. Hockney seems to have found Stanley and Boodgie less easy sitters than Freud found Pluto; he placed paper at strategic points around the studio to catch them at appropriate moments, and there's a video in which you can see one of the dogs wandering across a drawing Hockney's just been making.  

Hockney described the dogs as his "best pals", and you can feel his affection for them. 

This show seems to have been something of a pet project (sorry!) for Wallace Collection Director Xavier Bray, but it's a rather mixed experience. It was certainly popular when we visited, but it's by no means up to the standard of other recent shows at the museum, most notably the outstanding Frans Hals exhibition in 2021 and the eye-opening display of Anglo-Indian art we saw in 2019. 

Practicalities

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney is on at the Wallace Collection in London until October 15. The gallery is open daily from 1000 to 1700. Full-price tickets to the exhibition are £14, or £16 including a Gift Aid donation, and you can buy them online here. If you work your way doggedly through all the captions and the commentary on the free audioguide, you'll be in there for about 90 minutes. The Wallace is on Manchester Square, a few minutes' walk north of Selfridges on Oxford St. Bond St is the closest Tube station, but Oxford Circus and Baker St are also within walking distance.

Images

Edwin Landseer (1802-1873), A Saluki Dog, 1840-44, Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum, Burnley
George Stubbs (1724-1806), Ringwood, a Brocklesby Foxhound, 1792, Private collection
Unknown artist, Roman, The Townley Greyhounds, 1st-2nd century AD. © The Trustees of the British Museum
Unknown artist, Dog Lying on a Ledge, 1650-80. © Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Jean-Jacques Bachelier (1724-1806), Dog of the Havana Breed, 1768. © The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle
Lucian Freud (1922-2011), Pluto, 1988, Collection of Nathan Bernstein and Katharina Otto-Bernstein
David Hockney (born 1937), Dog Painting 30, 1995, Collection of The David Hockney Foundation. © David Hockney; Photo: Richard Schmidt