Gainsborough had a countryman’s love of dogs and included them in numerous portraits and landscape paintings. He also painted a few works where dogs were the central subjects. These include one of his earliest known works, Bumper (1745; private collection), Pomeranian Dogs (1777; Tate N05844 ) and this portrait of Tristram and Fox . While most individual canine portraits were produced for their owners, this is apparently a personal one, for Tristram and Fox were the artist’s own pets.
The identification of the animals in this oil portrait as Tristram and Fox, however, is not conclusive, for the subject ...
