Twelve famous dog paintings, counted down from twelve to one, run from Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait of 1434 to Coolidge's A Friend in Need of 1903. They show the dog as a sign of fidelity or rank, a mourner, a companion and a cheat.
Some come with a story. Thomas Gainsborough is said to have apologized to his wife through his dog, and in a Bruegel winter three hunters walk home through the snow with a single fox.
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How These Were Chosen
In Western painting, dogs turn up wherever people do: at the heels of hunters, on beds and laps, beside the dead. A hound signaled land and the right to hunt on it, and a lapdog signaled a house rich enough to feed an animal that did no work.
Painters also had a practical reason to include them. The people in a portrait hold still and keep their faces composed, but a dog rarely holds a pose. It turns, leans or looks up, and that small movement can carry the feeling of a whole scene.
A painting made this list only if the animal carries real weight: take it out and the gesture, the story or the meaning breaks. Over nearly five centuries, the dog moves from a sign of fidelity or rank to a character whose face viewers read for grief or comfort. The countdown opens in Victorian England, with a child in disgrace.
12. Briton Riviere, Sympathy (1877)
On a carpeted staircase, a white dog rests its muzzle on the shoulder of a little girl in a blue dress. She props her chin in her hand and looks away, while the dog keeps its eyes on her face.
The painter, Briton Riviere, was an English artist best known for his animals, and he painted this scene twice. The first version dates from 1877. It went on show the following year at the Royal Academy, the annual exhibition where London's painters presented their new work.
The picture tells a small household story. The girl has been sent to sit at the top of the stairs in disgrace, and her little dog has climbed up after her to keep her company.
Riviere called the painting Sympathy, and the word fits the dog rather than the child. The girl only sulks. The comfort in the picture comes from the animal leaning against her.
Viewers believed in it because the little dog does nothing a real dog would not do, with no trick and no human expression on its face. Walter Armstrong, the critic who wrote Riviere's biography in 1891, said the painter showed dogs "for what they are."
At a Glance
Artist: Briton Riviere (1840 to 1920)
Painted: 1877 (first version)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: Not published
Where to see it: Royal Holloway, University of London
11. Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, A Friend in Need (1903)
Under a red lamp, dogs of several breeds sit around a green card table like men at a weekly game, each one studying the cards in its paws. Two bulldogs sit side by side at the front, close enough to touch.
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, an American painter, made the picture in 1903 and gave it a title that sounds like praise: A Friend in Need. Who the friend is, and what he needs, only shows lower down, where the other players cannot see.