"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace." Milan Kundera
William Wegman (b.1943) is an American photographer and fine artist who photographs his beautiful and dutiful Weimaraner dogs in costumes or in surreal settings. Wegman's dogs also have lovely and artist-inspired names such as Man Ray and Fay Ray. The success of Wegman's work has translated into photography books, children's books, movies and television appearances, and now Wegman is designing fabric for dog beds as well. Wegman's work is characterized by its sweetness and love; there is almost nothing gloomy or dark about these photographs.
Lucian Freud (b.1922) is an English painter best known for his excrutiatingly detailed paintings of nude people. However, Freud also paints the dogs in his studio – an assortment of whippets or miniature greyhounds, as well as other beasts. While Freud's portraits of people can seem frozen and leaden, his portraits of dogs can seem like lively breaths of fresh air next to their human counterparts. In a sense it is as if Freud's dogs bring humanity to the artist's paintings.
Even Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) loved dogs and proved it by painting his charming dachshund Lump into a series of his paintings. Lump showed up at Picasso's door one day with his owner, the photographer David Douglas Duncan. For Picasso and Lump, it was love at first sight and Lump stayed with Picasso for six years after that. There is even a book of photographs of Picasso and his dachshund, entitled Picasso and Lump: A Dachshund's Odyssey.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City clearly understands the value of dogs in art, as they have published The Artful Dog: Canines from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is a collection of art as well as a loving tribute to man's best friend in writing, and includes the work of Milan Kundera, Groucho Marx, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Auguste Renoir, William Shakespeare and Charles M. Schulz.
Artist Moira McLaughlin uses dogs as her subject matter. She started her Dog Art Today site after her canine collage creations produced an enthusiastic and positive response from friends and family. McLaughlin's website is thorough in containing articles from all eras of dogs in art history from the 15th century on up.
