Victorian dog painters: dog shows, Maud Earl and the trade in dog portraits

In Victorian Britain, dogs became show animals, and their owners wanted pictures of them. Between the first dog show in 1859 and the First World War, a trade grew up in portraits of named, pedigree dogs: paintings for breeders, prints for the public and books for dog lovers. This page explains how dog shows and the Kennel Club created that market, and follows the painters who served it, above all the Earl family and Maud Earl. It draws on a history of the first dog show by Philip Howell, the Royal Kennel Club's own exhibition records, and the Museum of the Dog in New York, which is run by the American Kennel Club. For the longer history of dogs in art, start with the dogs in art guide.

Before the shows: Landseer and the engraved dog

People were already buying dog pictures before the first show. The Victorian Web says Edwin Landseer's animal paintings were widely circulated as engravings, often made by his brother Thomas, and were bought by both the aristocracy and the new middle class. Our page on Edwin Landseer covers his dogs in detail. Landseer painted dogs as characters in a story. Some of the painters who came after the shows had a different aim: to record what a winning dog of a particular breed looked like.

The first dog show, 1859

Philip Howell, writing for BRANCH, a scholarly website on 19th-century British history, says the first true dog show was held in June 1859 in the town hall at Newcastle upon Tyne. It was a modest event, attached to an older agricultural show. Only sporting breeds could enter, pointers and setters, and there were 60 dogs in all. The champions were Lord Derby's pointer, Bang, and Mr Jobling's Gordon setter, Dandy. The chief judge was a local gunsmith, William Rochester Pape, and the prizes were shotguns from his own workshop.

Shows spread quickly. By the end of the 1860s, Howell writes, dog shows were a fixture of the breeding world, with commercial sponsors and aristocratic patrons. The first field trial, a test of working gun dogs in the field, took place in Bedfordshire on 18 April 1865. Cruft's show began in 1891, and in the United States the Westminster show began in 1877.

The Kennel Club and the pedigree dog

Howell says the Kennel Club of Great Britain was established in 1873 "precisely in order to impose a measure of consistency on the burgeoning dog shows". Its main task was to regulate the dog fancy, the world of breeders and exhibitors. It did this through stud books and registers, which recorded each dog's parents. Howell stresses how new the idea of fixed breeds was at the time, and how breeding for the shows made a firm division between the "pedigree" dog and the "mongrel".

Painters responded to the shows. Our Town, a New York newspaper, quotes Alan Fausel of the Museum of the Dog on the Victorian painter Lucy Waller, who painted "to document champion dogs". Fausel added that such pictures were judged "the way they judge the dogs".

The Earl family of dog painters

In 2022 the Kennel Club held an exhibition about one family of dog painters, the Earls. Its announcement gives the family's story.

• Thomas William Earl, the elder brother, began the family tradition of painting dogs. The exhibition showed his painting of Dandie Dinmont terriers in a snowy landscape.
• George Earl was elected a member of the Kennel Club in 1879 and became known for his paintings of sporting dogs. The exhibition included his Champion Dogs of England, painted around 1860, and The Field Trial.
• Alice Maud Earl, George's daughter, known as Maud Earl, continued the tradition, focusing on anatomically accurate portraits of different breeds.
• Later generations, Thomas Percy Earl, Jack Earl and Maris Earl Tomaszewski, carried the tradition into the 20th century.

The club says the Earls' shared love of animals brought them royal commissions across the generations.

Maud Earl

Maud Earl lived from 1863 to 1943. The Royal Kennel Club holds more than 125 of her works, which it says chart the growth of her style over a career of six decades, and it calls her one of the most celebrated animal painters of her generation. The Kennel Club's announcement adds that the only known sculpture by her shows Largo, a pointer that belonged to William Arkwright.

Earl painted the champions of her day. Alan Fausel, curator of the Museum of the Dog, writes that she painted many dogs belonging to the Duchess of Newcastle, a leading breeder of wire fox terriers, and dogs owned by Francis Redmond, a leading breeder of smooth fox terriers who later became chairman of the Kennel Club.

She also sold her work to a wider public. Fausel describes two portfolios of her paintings reproduced as photogravures, a printing method that etches a photograph into a metal plate: British Hounds and Gun Dogs, and Terriers and Toys. Each was limited to 500 copies. Many sets were later broken up, and the single prints were framed.

The same Our Town article reports a comment by Fausel that shows the difference between two kinds of dog painter. Some painters simply documented champions, showing them in profile as if at a show, and "love feet". Earl's dogs are more expressive: in her Two Pointers on Point in a Field, of 1905, tall grasses hide the dogs' paws.

Silent Sorrow: a king's dog in mourning

Earl's best-known picture shows grief. King Edward VII died at Buckingham Palace on 6 May 1910. His wire fox terrier, Caesar, had been bred by the Duchess of Newcastle, sired by her dog Cackler of Notts, and given to the king nearly ten years earlier. At the funeral procession on 20 May, Fausel writes, Caesar followed directly behind the coffin, in front of nine heads of state.

The Illustrated London News commissioned Earl to paint Silent Sorrow, expecting great public sympathy for the king's dog. Our Town describes the painting: Caesar rests his head on the dead king's armchair. The magazine printed it on 21 May, the day after the funeral, and advertised photogravure prints of it for sale. Another publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, brought out a small book called Where's Master?, told in Caesar's voice. Fausel says it went into at least 16 editions in the months after the king's death.

Then a mystery. Fausel has never found a copy of the advertised print of Silent Sorrow, despite searching sale records and asking dealers and the Royal Kennel Club. He reports that Queen Alexandra was angry about Where's Master? and suggests that powerful people may have stopped the print. The original painting belongs to the American Kennel Club and is on long-term display at the Museum of the Dog in New York. Fausel adds that Earl left England for good in 1916.

Women who made a living painting dogs

Maud Earl was one of many women in this trade. In June 2026 the Royal Kennel Club opened an exhibition called Leaders of the Pack: The Women of the Royal Kennel Club Art Collection. The club says it brings together over 120 works by more than 100 women artists, spanning painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and medals across three centuries.

The club explains why dog portraits mattered to these artists. The women largely faced exclusion from formal art training and gallery representation, yet built professional careers regardless. Two of them, Lilian Cheviot and Fanny Moody, supported themselves entirely through commissions for dog portraits. The club also says its collection is split evenly between male and female artists, and it shows a pastel by Lucy Dawson of Dookie, the first corgi of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Victorian dog portrait trade at a glance

What the breed painters mean for your own dog's portrait

The Victorian breed painters wanted the right ears, the right coat and the right stance for each breed. Their portraits are records of real, named dogs. A portrait of your dog today works best from the same starting point: a clear photo that shows your dog's own markings and build.

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 Weimaraner from the studio examples in Purrealism's Victorian Noble style. For Queen Victoria's own dogs and the painters she hired, read our guide to Queen Victoria and her dogs. For the long tradition of the faithful, grieving dog that Silent Sorrow belongs to, see what dogs mean in paintings.