Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in art: from royal portraits to today

Part 1

Why painters kept choosing this dog

Mary, Queen of Scots, was also fond of small toy dogs, showing that royal taste for these dogs predated Charles II. The writer John Caius described a type called the Spainel-gentle, or Comforter, in 1570, noting it was sought out as a lapdog for what he called daintie dames. Titian painted a red and white toy spaniel in the Venus of Urbino in 1538, using the dog as a symbol tied to the sitter. Mary, Queen of Scots, was also fond of small toy dogs, including spaniels, which shows the royal taste for these dogs predated Charles II.

You can picture how useful a small, quiet lapdog was to a painter working slowly on a large canvas. The King Charles Spaniel's descendants have kept their hunting instincts but do not show high energy, and they are described as well suited to being lapdogs. A dog built for lying across a lap rather than working in a field made a natural subject to include at the edge of a formal portrait.

Part 2

King Charles II and the spaniels that shaped the breed's image

Charles II ruled England from 1660 to 1685, and he kept a large number of small spaniels that followed him through his daily business. His fondness for these dogs is well documented, and it is his name, not a later monarch's, that stuck to the breed. He was also known as the Cavalier King, and his first parliament was called the Cavalier Parliament. After Charles II, his brother James II also kept King Charles Spaniels, and the breed held its royal status until the end of James II's reign.

Part 3

Famous paintings that feature toy spaniels

Anthony van Dyck painted the Five Eldest Children of Charles I in 1637, and the group portrait includes a small spaniel resting beside the youngest princess. Van Dyck also painted an earlier version, The Three Eldest Children of Charles I, between November 1635 and March 1636, showing Charles II, Mary and James II with two King Charles Spaniels. Toy spaniels had already appeared in earlier court art too, including Titian's work, and paintings by Palma Vecchio and Paolo Veronese during the 16th century. The earliest recorded appearance of a toy spaniel in an English painting was in a portrait of Queen Mary I and King Philip.

Look closely at these older paintings and you will notice the dogs already had high domed heads and short noses, though their muzzles were more pointed than a Cavalier's is today.

Part 4

How the dog in paintings differs from the modern Cavalier

If you compare your Cavalier's face with the dogs in 17th century paintings, you will spot real differences. Paintings from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries show toy spaniels with longer, pointier snouts and thinner-boned limbs than today's Cavalier. During the 19th century, these spaniels were interbred with flat-nosed breeds, which changed their look considerably. In 1926, an American named Roswell Eldridge offered a prize at Crufts for the best Blenheim spaniels of the old type, as shown in pictures of Charles II's time, with a long face, no stop and a flat, undomed skull. Breeders who took up that challenge worked to recreate the older look, and in 1928 the first Cavalier King Charles Spaniel club was formed, with its standard based on a dog named Ann's Son. The Kennel Club recognised the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel as a breed in its own right in 1944.

Part 5

Spaniels in art beyond royal portraits

You do not have to look only at royal portraits to find these dogs in art. Queen Victoria's spaniel Dash was painted by Edwin Henry Landseer in 1836. When the first Cavalier club met in 1928 to write the breed standard, members brought pictures of toy spaniels painted by old masters to use as reference. That meeting shows how paintings were brought in as reference when people were deciding what the reborn breed should look like.

Part 6

What art tells us that written records cannot

You can trace changes in this dog's head shape across centuries simply by looking at a run of paintings in order. The domed head and short nose were already visible in 16th century paintings, but the muzzles in those pictures were more pointed than a Cavalier's muzzle is now. That visual record is exactly what breeders pointed to in the 1920s, when they wanted proof of what the older type of spaniel had looked like. Paintings also reflect an artist's choices and the fashions of a sitter's court, so a single portrait may say more about status than about every dog of its day. Even with that caution, a sequence of paintings across two or three centuries gives a clearer picture of gradual change than written descriptions alone.