Dogs in art: the painters and paintings behind a royal dog portrait

Dogs have been painted beside saints, kings, merchants and children for more than 500 years, and some of them were the subject of the picture themselves. This guide is about those paintings: which artists painted dogs, what the dogs meant, how dog portraits became a trade, and where you can see them today. If you are thinking about a royal portrait of your own dog, these paintings show where the idea comes from. The ten pages in this guide each take one painter, one painting or one idea in depth, and this page gives the overview. Ten individual paintings, from Titian's Emperor Charles V to Balla's dachshund, are picked out with the museum that holds each one in our article on famous paintings of dogs; this hub covers the painters and traditions behind them.

Why old dog paintings matter for a portrait of your pet

A royal pet portrait puts one real animal at the centre of a grand picture. That idea is old. Between 1725 and 1732 the French painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted a series of portraits of King Louis XV's hunting dogs, and the château de Fontainebleau, which holds most of the series, says each dog's name was written in gold letters to mark its rank. A century later Edwin Landseer painted Lion, a Newfoundland belonging to a Mr W. H. de Merle, at a size of 149.8 by 195.6 cm. In 1910 Maud Earl painted King Edward VII's terrier, Caesar, mourning his master.

Each of these pictures honours a single, named animal. Knowing how the great dog painters worked, and what they tried to show, helps you choose a style, a photo and a pose that give your own dog the same kind of dignity.

A short history of dogs in European painting

The story below is told in order of date. Each part links to a page with the full detail.

The 1400s: pets, travellers and hunters

The small dog in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, dated 1434, stands between a merchant and his wife in their house in Bruges. The National Gallery in London, which owns it, says in its glossary that the dog may symbolise the couple's fidelity. Its detailed catalogue calls the dog "clearly a household pet" and links it to the family of dogs from which the Brussels griffon was bred. Our page on the dog in the Arnolfini Portrait looks at it in close detail.

Religious painters of the same century gave dogs other roles. In a Tobias and the Angel painted in Andrea del Verrocchio's workshop around 1470 to 1475, a dog travels with Tobias and the Archangel Raphael; the National Gallery says it has been suggested that Verrocchio's pupil Leonardo painted the dog. These meanings, from the faithful dog to the dogs of Saint Roch and Saint Dominic, are explained on our page about what dogs mean in paintings.

The 1500s: Titian's spaniel and hounds

In Venice, Titian put dogs into both family portraits and myths. In The Vendramin Family, painted around 1540 to 1545, the youngest boy holds a spaniel, and the National Gallery says he seems to have been painted from life. In The Death of Actaeon, the hunter Actaeon, turned into a stag by the goddess Diana, is attacked by his own hounds. Read more about Titian's dogs.

The 1600s: Dutch families and Rembrandt's dog

Painters in the Dutch Republic put dogs into portraits of rich families and scenes of daily life. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam reads the greyhound beside the 10-year-old Martinus Alewijn, painted in 1644, as a sign of hunting and wealth. In 2025 it announced that Rembrandt based the barking dog in The Night Watch, painted in 1642, on a drawing made in 1619 by Adriaen van de Venne. Our page on dogs in Dutch Golden Age paintings covers these works and an 18th-century forgery of a boy with his dog.

1700 to 1750: the French king's dogs and Hogarth's pug

In France, the king's favourite hunting dogs had portraits of their own. The Louvre says Louis XIV ordered four portraits of his favourite female hounds from Alexandre-François Desportes in 1702 and four more in 1714. Oudry painted Louis XV's dogs between 1725 and 1732, and the king came to call him his painter of dogs. The story of these two painters is on our page about Oudry and Desportes.

In London, William Hogarth painted himself with his pug, Trump, in 1745. The National Gallery says the dog alludes to Hogarth's own combative character, and the V&A owns a porcelain Trump made at the Chelsea factory between 1747 and 1750. Hogarth also used dogs in his satires. See Hogarth and his pug, Trump.

1750 to 1830: English country dogs and Spanish royal dogs

Thomas Gainsborough painted gun dogs beside landowners, as in Mr and Mrs Andrews of around 1750, and a dog beside the actress Mary Robinson in 1781 and 1782, which the Wallace Collection says alludes to her fidelity. Our page on Gainsborough's dogs covers five of his pictures.

In Spain, Francisco de Goya painted dogs for royal tapestry designs from 1775. In his portrait of Charles III hunting, the words "REY N. Señor" (King our Lord) are painted on the dog's collar. In his portrait of the Duchess of Alba of 1795, the white poodle was painted in at a later date. Read about Goya's dogs, including the Half-Submerged Dog.

The 1800s: Landseer, dog shows and the breed painters

Edwin Landseer drew skinned dogs as a teenager to learn their anatomy; the V&A holds eight of these studies of dogs and cats, made between 1817 and 1821. He went on to paint dogs that seem to think and feel, such as the dog resting its head on its master's coffin in The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner of 1837. The V&A says an engraving of that painting sold widely the following year. See our page on Edwin Landseer's dogs.

Then came the dog shows. Philip Howell, writing for BRANCH, a scholarly website on 19th-century Britain, says the first dog show was held at Newcastle upon Tyne in June 1859, and the Kennel Club was founded in 1873 to bring rules to the new shows. Some painters then specialised in pedigree dogs. The Kennel Club says George Earl became a member in 1879 and painted sporting dogs, and his daughter Maud Earl painted the champions of her day. Our page on Victorian dog painters tells their story.

Core ideas: what a painted dog can tell you

Four ideas help you read almost any dog in an old painting.

The dog's name. Some dogs were painted as individuals. Oudry's royal dogs have their names in gold, and Desportes's paintings for Louis XIV are titled with the dogs' names, such as Diane and Blonde. A named dog is a portrait of an animal, in the same sense as a portrait of a person.

The dog's job. A gun dog beside a landowner points to shooting and land. A hound at a hunt belongs to a king's pack. A small lapdog belongs to the home.

The dog's meaning. The National Gallery's glossary says dogs can stand for fidelity and can accompany religious and mythological figures. A dog can also mourn, as in Landseer's Chief Mourner.

The dog's breed at that time. Breeds looked different in the past, and a painting records how a dog looked then.

Common mistakes when looking at dog paintings

Treating every dog as a hidden symbol. The National Gallery's catalogue of the Arnolfini Portrait shows that the dog, like the oranges and the candle, was not in van Eyck's underdrawing, and calls the old theory of hidden symbols unconvincing on several points. Sometimes a dog is a pet.

Assuming breeds have always looked the same. The V&A says Hogarth's pug, Trump, had a much longer muzzle than the pugs of today. The Victorian Web says the white Newfoundland with a black head, normal when Landseer painted one in 1838, lost favour to all-black dogs by 1870.

Assuming a dog was painted from life. Rembrandt's dog in The Night Watch was based on another artist's drawing, according to the Rijksmuseum.

Trusting an old label. The Rijksmuseum's Boy Fleaing a Dog was bought in 1840 as a work by Gerard ter Borch. Its catalogue now calls it a forgery, made in 1718 or later, with cracks painted on to make it look old.

Missing a dog that came later. The Fundación Goya en Aragón says the poodle beside Goya's Duchess of Alba was added after the rest of the portrait.

The painters compared

Where to see dog paintings today

Most of the paintings in this guide hang in public museums. Check each museum's page before a visit, because paintings move between rooms, go on loan or rest in storage.

• The National Gallery, London. The Arnolfini Portrait, Titian's Vendramin Family and Death of Actaeon, Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode and Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews. In September 2026 Hogarth's The Painter and his Pug, which belongs to Tate, also hung here.
• The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Many of Landseer's dog paintings, including The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner, and his early anatomy drawings, as well as the porcelain figure of Hogarth's pug.
• The Wallace Collection, London. Gainsborough's Mary Robinson with her dog.
• The Royal Kennel Club Art Gallery, London. Dog portraits from three centuries, including works by Maud Earl, shown free by appointment in Mayfair.
• The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Rembrandt's The Night Watch and the Dutch family portraits with dogs.
• The château de Fontainebleau and the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, near and in Paris. Oudry's portraits of Louis XV's dogs and Desportes's portraits of Louis XIV's hounds.
• The Museum of the Dog, New York. Maud Earl's Silent Sorrow, owned by the American Kennel Club.

How this applies to choosing a portrait of your dog

Purrealism offers 15 royal portrait styles: nine from Indian royal courts and six from European history, including Renaissance Royal, Baroque Aristocrat, Regency Era and Victorian Noble. The European style names come from periods of European history, and the painters in this guide can help you pick a period you like. If Titian's spaniel or van Eyck's small pet appeals to you, look at the Renaissance Royal style. If Landseer's Newfoundlands and Maud Earl's champions are more to your taste, look at Victorian Noble. The history behind the European styles themselves is in our guide to European royal portraits, and the lives of real royal dogs are in royal pets in history.

The breed finder further down this page lets you choose dogs or cats, then a breed from the studio examples, and shows every studio portrait of that breed with its style. Tapping one starts a portrait in that style. The cover of this page shows a French Bulldog from the studio examples in the Victorian Noble style.

Whatever style you choose, the old painters show what makes a dog portrait work: a real animal with its own face, markings and way of standing. Start with a clear photo of your dog in daylight, taken at its eye level, with its eyes in focus. The portrait studio takes one photo of up to 5 MB. You can see more finished portraits in the gallery, and our guide on how to choose a royal portrait style helps you match a style to your dog's coat and character.