Picasso furniture and dog

This painting by Picasso is entitled “Henri II buffet with dog and chair”.  The Henri II style of furniture (1860-1900) is known as French Renaissance.  It  is notable for its size and solidity. Pieces tend to be huge and rectangular in composition, with heavy carving, dark wood and large bun feet. Armoires are notable for their often elaborate cornices with large finials and crests, and show a strong Italian influence in their carving and design. Mirrors and beds tend to be very ornate, with carved pillars and finials. Armoires have either solid wooden doors or glass mirror doors.
I gather you can buy Henri II furniture for a song in French auction houses.
As for Picassos…

Canine couture

I came across this portrait of Queen Anne of Bohemia and Hungary.  It is dated 1520  and was painted by Hans Maler, a German portrait painter.  Note the dog’s striking jewelled collar.

During the Renaissance, the Royal courts of Europe often set the trends in canine couture.  Detailed paintings, tapestries, early literature, letters and diaries, catalogue a collection of well depicted beautiful collars, jewels and coats worn during this period by royal canines.  Dogs are, after all, the most loyal of subjects. No expense was spared for royal hounds and lap dogs alike when it came to providing for their comfort. Dogs slept in sumptuous beds (often the king’s or queen’s), ate delicacies from exquisite bowls and had their every need attended to by servants. Louis XI of France (1423-1483), a notorious miser, clad his favourite greyhound, named “Cher Ami” (Dear Friend) in a collar of scarlet velvet garnished with 20 pearls and 11 rubies.

Hermès handbag

Who needs a Hermès bag?

Let's have a drink!

Panic over! 

Flemish dog in Rijksmuseum

In view of the grand opening of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam this week after 10 years of renovation, I am copying a blog entry which I originally wrote in April 2009.


"Thanks to a donation from the Dutch lottery BankGiro Lottery, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has acquired five sculptures, all of which make an exceptional contribution to the Rijksmuseum’s international collection of sculptures. From 21 April 2009, the sculptures can be admired in the Acquisitions Hall of the Rijksmuseum. The highlight of the exhibition is a lively sculpture of a Greyhound: the dog is looking up, alert, as though listening to his master. On his collar is the coat of arms of the Roose family from Antwerp, so it is likely the dog really existed. This exceptional animal ‘portrait’ was created by Artus Quellinus (1609-1668) from Antwerp. From 1648 onwards the sculptor spent considerable time in Amsterdam, where he was commissioned to design the sculptural decorations of the new Town Hall (today's Royal Palace on Dam Square). Many of the sculptures of the Town Hall decorations reveal the classicist influence that became increasingly popular in the mid-seventeenth century in the Northern Netherlands. Despite the numerous commissions that awaited him in the Netherlands, Quellinus decided to return to Antwerp in 1664 where he died four years later. "

Underwater dogs

 

Creature from the deep?  No.  It's Alex, the 7 year old Labrador.  Read on ....

 

 

 

Seth Casteel is an award-winning photographer and New York Times Best Selling Author. His series of Underwater Dogs photographs have been seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world and have become one of the most famous series of images in the past decade.

"I just really like dogs. They inspire me. I wish I could be a dog, but I can't, so I will do my best to live like one. "

In 2007, Seth began volunteering to photograph homeless pets to help them find loving families. These improved photos showcased unique personalities, resulting in countless adoptions. One day, someone asked if they could commission Seth to photograph their dog. A photo from this photo shoot was chosen to be on the cover of a popular pet magazine, which sparked a career as a pet photographer.

Since then, Seth's work has been published in National Geographic, The New York Times and in hundreds of other magazines, newspapers and calendars. He has travelled the world in pursuit of his passion, working with animals on five continents.

Seth lives and works in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Dogs in art

M. C. Escher (1898-1972) was a Dutch graphic artist. He is a world-famous artist known for his so-called impossible structures, such as Ascending and Descending, Relativity, his Transformation Prints, such as Metamorphosis I, Metamorphosis II and Metamorphosis III, Sky & Water I or Reptiles.  He is known for his often mathematically inspired wooduts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible construtions, explorations of infinity, architecure, and tessellations.  His works can be seen in Het Paleis which houses a permanent exhibition dedicated to his work.  The collection is housed in the former Winter Palace of Queen Mother Emma of the Netherlands. It is the only public building in The Hague where the original royal ambiance of a palace has been maintained.

 

This is his take on dogs:

 

 

Flemish Baroque painter

 

Johannes Fijt was a Flemish Baroque animal painter and etcher.  He was born in Antwerp in 1611.  He trained in several well established ateliers in Antwerp before travelling to Paris, Venice, Naples and Rome.  

Fyt excelled in the rendering of animal life in its most varied forms. He was very skillful in the reproduction of the coat of deer, dogs, greyhounds, hares and monkeys. He had no equal in painting the plumage of peacocks, woodcocks, ducks, hawks, and cocks and hens, nor was any artist even of the Dutch school more effective in filling his compositions with accessories of tinted cloth, porcelain, vases and fruit.

Fyt's paintings can be seen in several British museums such as the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection among others.

I particularly like this etching titled: "Barking dog" which is in the  Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.

Baby Ozzy?

This painting by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, RA (7 March 1802 – 1 October 1873) is called Doubtful Crumbs.  Landseer was an English painter, well known for his paintings of animals—particularly horses, dogs and stags. The best known of Landseer's works, however, are sculptures: the lions in Trafalgar Square. The puppy looks like a baby Ozzy.

Otter hound

Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) painted this picture of an otter hound which can be seen at the Wallace Collection.  Rosa is a French painter and sculptor best known for her paintings of animals.  She was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, the first woman to be so honoured.

By family accounts, she had been an unruly child and had a difficult time learning to read. To remedy this her mother taught her to read and write by having her select and draw an animal for each letter of the alphabet. To this practice in the company of her doting mother she attributed her love of drawing animals.

Her most famous work is the monumental (8 feet high and 16 feet wide) The Horse Fair which she painted in 1849 and which was purchased by the American millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt and which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Oddly enough she was more popular in England than in France.  She met Queen Victoria who was an admirer of her work. 

An early Bohemian and feminist, Bonheur defied female convention of the day by wearing men’s clothing and smoking cigarettes.  On her wearing of trousers, she said at the time that her choice of attire was simply practical as it facilitated her work with animals: "I was forced to recognize that the clothing of my sex was a constant bother. That is why I decided to solicit the authorization to wear men's clothing from the prefect of police. But the suit I wear is my work attire, and nothing else. The epithets of imbeciles have never bothered me...."

The Horse Fair

 

Expensive muse

La Lecture fetched 30 million €.
Wish I had a Picasso hiding in the attic!

The young muse

Tonight Sotheby's in London is auctioning Picasso's La Lecture. It is estimated to fetch between 14 million and 21 million €.
His muse for the painting was Marie-Thérèse Walter. They met outside Galeries Lafayette where she had been buying clothes. He was stunned by her beauty and asked her if he could paint her portret. She was just 17. He was 42 and the chouchou of the Parisian beau monde. She had never heard of him. Here she is with her mother's dog.
The headline in a Flemish paper this morning had this caption: "Sooner or later all Picasso's women ended up on museum walls."

Did you know?

Belle is Snoopy's sister. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri with her unnamed teenage son whom Snoopy noted as resembling the Pink Panther. Belle herself looks like her brother, but with longer eyelashes. In addition she wears a lace collar.
In the comic strip, Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz, Snoopy was often stated to have seven siblings. Andy, Marbles, Olaf, Spike and Belle. And Molly and Rover although they are of little importance. In the June 6, 1959 comic strip, following the birth of Charlie Brown's sister Sally, Snoopy remarks that he has no brothers or sisters, and is an "only dog." However, in a March 18, 1971 strip, Snoopy writes in his autobiography: "I was born one bright Spring morning at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. I was one of eight puppies."
Their mother is called Missy, but has appeared only once in Peanuts, on July 26, 1996.
Like Spike, Belle also plays the violin.
Belle only made a few appearances in the strip, but is well-remembered because of the Belle stuffed animal toys sold in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many people who were not regular readers of the comic strip mistakenly thought that she was Snoopy's girlfriend, rather than his sister. In Snoopy's World War I fantasies, Belle is a nurse, not a soldier.

Worth a visit

Leeds Castle, near Maidstone in Kent has a unique collection of antique dog collars spanning five centuries. Nearly 100 collars and related exhibits in the Leeds Castle Dog Collar Museum trace the history of canine neckwear from medieval to Victorian times. The museum delights more than 500,000 visitors from home and overseas every year.
Originally assembled by the Irish medieval scholar John Hunt and his wife Gertrude, who presented the collars to Leeds Castle in 1979 in memory of her husband, the collection has since been extended by the Leeds Castle Foundation.
The museum is also a tribute to the Castle’s last private owner, Olive, Lady Baillie, whose love of dogs inspired Gertrude Hunt to make the gift.
Many of the earlier collars dating from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries were designed to protect the dog. It was a time when wolves, bears and wild boar roamed the forests of Europe and the vulnerable throats of hunting dogs were shielded by broad iron collars bristling with fearsome spikes.

More of the same.

These two little silver dogs are quite exceptional pieces. Indeed, although dogs are often represented in Iranian or Mesopotamian art, objects of this type - probably ornaments of dress - are rare.
They come from Bactria, a region situated between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Silver was frequently employed by Oriental goldsmiths, yet few examples of silver pieces still exist because these objects were seldom kept. This precious metal was particularly popular in Bactria. The region of Bactria had a strong tradition of decoration using animal figures. Wild animals (birds of prey, monkeys, camels, and wild boars) and fantastic beasts (dragons) were represented on arms, tools, vases, and dress ornaments.
These two little dogs, barely four centimetres long, are pierced vertically. It is possible that a thread was passed through the hole to hang them on a necklace, for instance, or - more probably - these elements were attached to a metal stem and used as pinheads or the tops of decorative staffs.
They date from the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC and are also exhibited in the Louvre.

Isn't this lovely?

This small gold dog pendant is one of the first examples of gold- and silverwork in the 4th millennium BC and it illustrates the dexterity of metallurgists active in Susa in the Late Uruk period, from 3300 to 3100 BC. (Susa lies in present day south west Iran).
The art of metallurgy was a skill acquired in that period. It encapsulates all the metalworking techniques known at the time, and also provides valuable information about one of the two principal breeds of domestic dogs in the Susian plain.
The breed of dog represented here is different from the long, narrow salukis featured on the ceramic painted vases that were found in the Susa I necropolis dating from the foundation of the city. This stocky animal with a curled-over tail was domesticated, as indicated by the collar around its neck. Such domestication was not recent, dating back to pre-Neolithic times. But the 4th millennium BC was marked by an increase in pastoral activity throughout the Near East, probably as a consequence of improved exploitation of ovine wool, and the dog became a highly prized assistant to man. Dogs often feature in the art of this period, particularly in Susa, in the form of statuettes and pendants.
This pendant is exhibited in the Louvre.

Boy with dogs

This picture by Titian was painted sometime in the 16th Century.  1565 to be precise.   Look at the nursing bitch in the detail of the picture on the right.  She has Belle's eyes.  Now this is extraordinary because at that time most household dogs were small dogs, lap dogs.  So why is this little boy out in the countryside with these big dogs?  One a sheepdog and the other one a Labrador retriever type.  There are some grapes by the boy's left hand.  Is this Rennaissance symbolism at its best?  Definitely Belle's eyes and that's all that matters to me. 

Dogs in the Bible ( cont. )

Leonardo da Vinci's self portrait

In the Book of Tobit, included in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox canon of the Bible, but designated as apocryphal in the Protestant tradition, we hear of Tobit, a devout Jew in exile and his son Tobias. Despite his many good works, Tobit is mysteriously blinded and despairingly begs God to take his life. At the same time in Ecbatana one Sarah, who is afflicted by a demon, Asmodeus, that has killed her seven husbands on their wedding night, also asks God for death. God hears both prayers and sends the archangel Raphael to help. Sent by his father on business to the distant city of Media, the young Tobias and his dog are guided by Raphael (in the form of a young man) to the house of Sarah. There Tobias marries Sarah and, following Raphael's instructions, exorcises the demon. They return to his home, where Tobias cures his father's blindness.  The young Tobias and his dog with the angel have been a favourite subject of Christian iconography.





Tobias and the Angel

Find the dog by the Angel's right foot

Tobias and the Angel is painted on wood.  It is believed to be the work of different artists but it is attributed to Perugino who worked in Andrea del Verrochio's workshop in Florence during the 1470's.  Parts of this painting and especially the dog were painted by Leonardo da Vinci who was also a pupil of Verrochio at the time. Look at the dog in Leonardo's self portrait and the dog in the painting.