Although I love painting landscapes, whether streetscapes or woodlands, I also like to paint animals. It doesn’t matter what I paint a street or a donkey – I response to colour and light in a subject. Yet, whenever I paint a dog or sparrow I have this sneaking suspicion that serious artists don’t do this. That somehow paintings of animals are frivolous. That by painting a donkey on the beach I am ruining my credibility. So I have put together this photo-essay to challenge the thought that paintings of animals, particularly pets, are not a proper subject for serious art.
The English Victorians loved their animals and children, in that order. They happily sent other people’s (working class) children to work in factories and mines, generously limiting their working day to “only” 10 hours in 1847, but had founded the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals a full two decades earlier. In the late C19th century artists made a good living from painting art featuring animals. Charles Burton Barber specialised in sentimental paintings of children and animals.
Edwin Landseer painter and sculpture was, in many ways still is, the master of the animal painting.
Some of the narrative that underpins his art is probably too sentimental for modern tastes, such as “Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner” (below) but we are dealing with a society that created the legend of Greyfriars Bobby (updated by Hollywood in 1949 in the Lassie film “Challenge to Lassie“).
The impressionists in France, however, looked at animals with a much less sentimental eye. The Father of impressionism, French artist, Édouard Manet liked to tackle modern and postmodern-life subjects, and several of his contemporary portraits included pets.
In the 1860s Manet painted one of his most controversial paintings, “Olympia” of a prostitute, with her servant and cat. The black cat traditionally symbolized prostitution.
Other impressionist artists like Renoir, Monet and Gauguin also painted every day scenes, which sometimes included the pets that shared their homes and the homes of their friends.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir portraits are bristling with pets, mostly dogs.
Yes, you do recognise that little black and white, pooch. That’s Tama, who was also painted by Manet. Tama was a Japanese spaniel who belonged to his friend Henri Cernuschi, a banker and collector of Asian art.
Paul Gauguin
Claude Monet’s cat
Rosa Bonheur, another French painter and sculpture, was known as painter of animals or “animalière” was known for her artistic realism. Her paintings are very beautiful, although her hounds do look very solemn but not overly sentimental or twee.
Don’t make the mistake of his think that she was “just” an animal artist. Bonheur has been called “the most famous woman painter of her time, perhaps of all time”. She also painted Ploughing in the Nivernais, a truly epic painting (it is massive – 133cm×260cm or 52in×100in) which was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848, and now at Musée d’Orsay in Paris. I stood in front of this painting in 2012 and marveled at her realistic depiction of the mud!
The exception seem to have been, Vincent Van Gogh, who does not seem to have been much interested in pets. He once drew an old lady with her dog and painted a couple of cow paintings.
Henri Matisse was definitely a cat lover.
Finally, I will finish with Welsh artist, Gwen John, who lived in Paris for most of her adult life was a painter of delicate portraits and interior scenes. She loved her cats they frequently featured in her paintings.
The Impressionists’ and Post-impressionists’ treatment of domestic animals and pets in their work showed that a pet dog or cat was considered serious subject that could included in portraits or in portraits of their own. They were part and parcel of Victorian life and their art reflected that. There was plenty of sentimental (English) pet art in the Victorian age but the French Impressions and Post-Impressionists showed that it was how you painted your subject matter that counted. In my next blog I will consider 20th century artists’ treatment of pets and animals in their art.
Fascinating…
Marvellous post! So much information here that is new to me about these artists and their depiction of pets. I have a painting by Mabel Hallams of two grey field hunters in a paddock. I saw it in a window in a small London gallery and had to have it. Fortunately the price was within my budget. I always tell people that when i am in the elders home I will have that painting with me. My greys!
Mabel Hallam was a fine painter of horses, you are very fortunate to have one of her paintings.
Yes. The painting just seemed to speak to me and still does.
really enjoyed this post, Emma. I had a postcard of the top image as a child, and loved it. It’s my first memory of choosing a painting to have in my room. I’ve never heard of Rosa Bonheur, but love these paintings!
I had never heard of Rosa Bonheur until I cam across her immense painting in Paris. I was stunned by it. The English Victorian paintings of pets and children are like a guilty pleasure. I wanted to dislike them but I couldn’t.
Yes, I think I had to go through that phase to get where I am now!
I’m very fond of putting animals into my artwork, Emma, I think anyone who loves animals, appreciates that kind of thing!…. I feel like a landscape is a bit boring without an animal or person in there, somewhere,even if it is just a bird or two! and after all, when we go out in nature, we usually see animals, somewhere! I really enjoyed this post and I think that anyone who is against the idea of painting animals and children is probably afraid of the subject…you know what they say about, “Never work with animals or children”!! Unpredictable and they never hold still! I also take my hat off to those artists from bygone eras who painted animals and children with such realism and never had the benefit of a camera to hold them still with!
I must say, I was thinking the same about many of these paintings. Those sitters who had cats on their laps, I wonder how long they actually stayed there? I noticed that Gwen John’s cats were asleep a lot of the time.
I bet cats, on the whole, stay still better than dogs!! But you’re right, they do move around and usually get off your lap whenever you REALLY want them to stay…unless they are really old, perhaps? Mine are 3 1/2 and let me tell you, those two NEVER are still for more than two minutes in a row, even when sleeping!
Thus proving these are really great artists. I have only ever managed a quick sketch of my cats.
Love these.
What a great collection! Looking forward to the next post. My favourite pet painting is by Andrew Wyeth, “Master Bedroom”.
Thanks for that. I’ll add him to my next blog on C20th artists and pet paintings.
Oh, great news, thank you!
Prachtige post en erg veel informatie waar ik weer wat van opgestoken heb
Adogable! We are hoping to get a standard poodle in April.
They are meant to be very intelligent dogs.
had a Wonderful time reading this beautiful narrative an illustrations- it may be Manet met Landseer while in London, founding with Edward Pointer a ‘mixed-gender’ art school, Slade. It is said Landseer proposed to Rosa at a London dinner-gathering… the room went silent… then roared with laughter. ‘Ned’ btw was known as a subversive liberator of women’s independence, a devoted ‘Bolton Bachelor’ (6th dk Devonshire) who in respect of their friend Caroline Norton (first Family Act 1838) gracefully resolved never to marry. My fav artist supported many women pioneers in arts and science before their success. thank you for a lovely page. xjam
Well, I knew none of that James although I had heard of the brave Caroline Norton. Thank you,You just gave me a wonderful slice of C19th artistic life there. There was a lot more to Lanseer than I realised.