George Stubbs, A.R.A.

M. Bernard circa 1958;

With Frank Partridge & Son, London, by 1960;

With Arthur Ackermann & Son Ltd., London;

Purchased from the above by Mr and Mrs E. Berger;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 14 July 1989, lot 6, for £240,000;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 11 July 1997, lot 32.

London, Frank Partridge & Son, Sporting Paintings, 1960, no. 64.

The Connoisseur, October 1955, p. 25;

R. Fountain and A. Gates, Stubbs' Dogs: The Hounds and Domestic Dogs of the Eighteenth Century as seen through the Paintings of George Stubbs, London 1984, p. 89, no. 26, reproduced fig. 60;

J. Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter. Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London 2007, p. 484, cat. no. 257, reproduced in colour p. 485.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: George Stubbs. Dark Brown and White Spaniel. Signed and dated 1784. This painting is on a strong, slightly bevelled panel, probably oak. There are two joints, which have remained firmly attached and unmoved. They are only faintly visible on the front in a raking light, although a brief, apparently surface crack can be seen along the lower joint in the dark background to the left of the dog's paws. However the panel appears to have been perfectly selected and to have always remained stable and flat. It is possible that the background detail may have darkened to some extent over time. There are small retouchings in the foreground and at the edges but elsewhere the background is rather finely intact. The vigorous brushwork in the dog is finely preserved in some areas, for example in delicate parts such as the fine fringe of hair under the animal's stomach silhouetted against the dark background, and also in the central features of the head. Along the top of the back however there have been stretches of wear in the past which have been retouched fairly recently, as have some other thinner places in the brown fur, such as the ears. The white fur is naturally less vulnerable, and any similar wear is not evident. There are however various fairly small retouchings visible under ultra violet light, which may be simply accentuating cosmetically the increasingly translucent original brushwork of the dog's curly hair, or accreted touches over the craquelure perhaps. Despite this scattering of retouchings much of the original white fur may well still remain in fairly good underlying condition. The impact of the painting has been powerfully preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This sensitively painted portrait of a favoured pet is a fine example of one of the more endearing, and timelessly captivating aspects of Stubbs's art. Dramatically silhouetted against a flat dark background, the composition is almost frieze-like and recalls the artist's celebrated work in enamel which he had been actively experimenting with in collaboration with Josiah Wedgwood since the late 1760s. The effect is to accentuate the solidity and three-dimensionality of the dog itself, projecting him out of the picture towards the viewer. Though dogs, particularly hounds, had featured in Stubbs’s work since the mid-1760s, it was not until the mid-1770s that portraits of single dogs begin to feature with any regularity within his repertoire. From this period onwards however, dog portraiture becomes one of the principal and most sought after aspects of his art; a phenomenon which not only reflects the changing nature of Stubbs's patrons, but a conscious broadening of the artist's repertoir.   

Dog portraiture began in France at the court of Louis XIV, who commissioned portraits of his favourite hounds from Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and the genre has its origins in the art of venery, particulalry the hunting scenes of Frans Snyders. In England, where the emphasis in hunting was increasingly being placed upon the performance of individual hounds, which led to intense rivalry among the landed elite, this was reflected in the paintings of John Wootton and Peter Tillemans; the former of whom in particular started to produce portraits of dogs in the mid eighteenth century. Fine examples of Wootton's work in this manner include the mock heroic portrait of Horace Walpole’s favourite dog Patapan, painted in 1743. However, it was Stubbs, a generation later, who really developed the genre, working, as he was, at a time when dogs were becoming increasingly valued not only as sporting trophies, but as objects of interest in themselves. By the late eighteenth century, the dog had gained a new status as a prized possession within English households which it had not formerly enjoyed. Stubbs's highly sensitive paintings of these animals are executed with infinite attention to detail and are possessed with boundless character and charm. Whilst they are seldom uninteresting as paintings, at their best they are small masterpieces.