Labrador retriever in art: how the breed has been painted and drawn

Part 1

How Britain's sporting art tradition began

Sporting painters studied these dogs in motion and at attention, showing the stamina and concentration prized in setters, pointers, deerhounds, and spaniels. If you look at an old sporting painting today, you can often see the same qualities you notice in your own dog, such as alertness, a steady gaze, and coiled energy before a run.

Part 2

Edwin Landseer and the Victorian dog portrait

Edwin Landseer, who lived from 1802 to 1873, was an important English animal painter, skilled enough that people called him an animalier. He became a favourite painter of Queen Victoria and was knighted. Landseer's tendency to humanize his dogs and add sentimental narrative delighted the public, even though critics such as John Ruskin were horrified by it. You can see this same instinct today whenever someone looks at their own dog and reads a personality into its expression.

• In 1824 he painted Lion, a Newfoundland Dog, a portrait commissioned by the dog's owner and set against a Scottish landscape, now held by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• That painting, along with others such as A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society from 1831, led to this type of Newfoundland becoming known as the Landseer dog.
• In 1830 he painted The Faithful Hound, showing a dog howling over its master's body, and presented it as his diploma work when the Royal Academy elected him a member in 1831.
• Earlier, in 1822, he painted The Twa Dogs, showing a Newfoundland and a collie in a scene based on a poem by Robert Burns, an early example of giving dogs human thoughts and feelings.
• In 1836 he painted Comical Dogs, dressing two wire-haired terriers in a lady's bonnet and a Scottish cap.

If you have ever posed your own dog in a favourite hat or scarf for a photo, Landseer's dressed-up terriers show that the urge to humanise a dog in a portrait is nothing new. The Newfoundland in Lion was described as a large Canadian working dog, known for its intelligence, docility, and swimming power. The dog's owner commissioned the painting, and Landseer based the background on a Scottish landscape.

Part 3

What the name 'Landseer' says about breed labels in art

The Newfoundland variant in Landseer's paintings came to be known as the Landseer dog because of this and other works.

Part 4

Why retrievers and gun dogs are harder to trace in early art

Sporting art of the period favoured pointers, setters, and spaniels working alongside game, water, and mountain terrain. These paintings celebrated the stamina and concentration these dogs needed in the field. If your own dog is a retriever, the closest link you can draw is through this wider tradition of painting working gun dogs with care and individual character.

Part 5

What this history means for how you look at your own dog

A critic said Landseer gave his dogs the intelligence of canine nature without a false, humanised expression. You can apply the same close attention when you look at your own dog, noticing the particular way it tilts its head or sits at attention.