Canine companionship is personal. Political. Pandemic puppies grew into problems as lockdowns were lifted and our old routines returned, resulting in dogs being resold online. In Israel last year, one religious conservative party wanted to raise annual dog registration fees 70-fold, fighting climate change (citing the “environmental concerns” of raising dogs) – or targeting Tel Aviv pet owners. Nobody took the idea seriously until its backers sat in the current governing coalition. But dogs and democracy have always been difficult bedfellows. Paris after the French revolution meant ruff days for lapdogs, which roamed the streets as symbols of the old regime.
The exhibition Portraits of Dogs at the Wallace Collection in central London takes the long view on our four-legged friends. There’s a Roman sculpture of sight hounds (discovered in the 18th century), sketches of paws by Leonardo da Vinci, and paintings by Lucian Freud and David Hockney. But the exhibition mainly displays heavy portraits of pooches from the decades either side of 1800: Gainsborough, Stubbs, and lots of Landseer. Dogs in gilded frames first adorned nobles’ walls all over Europe, then these animals captured the imagination across social classes. At the turn of the 19th century, doggerel was written, novels by and about dogs were sold, elegies were composed. The canine became culture.
