Animal Crackers

I promised some pictures from Frieze Masters, and today I thought I'd start with some dogs.

Here are some from a painting by Adam Albrecht, called Retour de la Chasse, from 1828, (I was going to save the horses up for later, but you can't really include a picture about hunting and pretend there aren't any horses, can you):

I like this kind of house - a style that is very Germanic, it seems to me - why did they build like that and the English didn't?

If you want to look at that picture in greater detail (although less true colour) or, indeed, if you want to buy it, you can go to this address to find out more.

Meanwhile, here is a more modern dog, painted by Mr L Freud, (I always call him that because I can never remember if he's Lucian or Lucien):

I seem incapable of getting a frame square in my camera lens

Going back into the past, (although, irritatingly I've forgotten just how far back - possibly 12th century [or could it be 5th century - how the hell did I manage to delete the details?]), here is a rather scary hound:

Then there's a funny little fluff bucket whose main function seems to be to comfort poor sad looking Lady Mary Fielding, painted by Daniel Mytens in the early 17th century:

There was the afghan hound that belonged to Picasso - it occurs to me that there's a novel to be written from that dog's point of view, one of those awfully clever, almost unbearably boring novels that people other than me seem so surprisingly fond of. Perhaps I should write it, woof, woof, woof:

 

plus this long-suffering canine soul, pictured in an early 17th century Collector's Cabinet painting by Adriaen van Stalbempt:

Finally, there was the weird photographic semi-recreation by some Japanese person of the great Velasquez painting in the Prado, with the addition of two viewers in costume, (so hilarious, hem hem); the dog was the only faintly appealing bit of it, I thought:

Tomorrow, I may move on to the rest of the animal kingdom plus, possibly, some flora to go with the fauna.