This is a head study of some beautiful spaniels by artist Maud Earl.   My Dad’s Human, Pat Pencak posted this from a book of Maud Earl’s paintings and I thought I would share it with you.  Maud Earl also did some wonderful oil paintings of Welsh Springers that you can see on  my website here  (the two bottom paintings) .

Maud Earl was born in 1864 in London.   Her father George was a well known sporting artist and taught his daughter.

She painted dogs in person and it sounds as if it would be fun to sit for her,  because she had a way with dogs !   In one interview, she said

“You can’t paint dogs unless you understand them; I don’t mean merely from the fancier’s point of view. You must know whether they are happy and comfortable, and if not, why not. You must know how to quiet them when they become excited and nervous. You must know all their little likes and dislikes, and this knowledge comes from long experience.”       I say WOOF to that, Miss Maud !

Describing how she went about painting her canine subjects, Miss Earl explained that she never used photographs, for she preferred to paint what she saw, rather than what the camera saw.  Rather, she posed the canine subject on a sort of portable stool on castors, which made it easy to move about.   An attendant usually accompanied the dog, but more often than not, Miss Earl was the one to settle the dog so that he might pose quietly. First she sketched in the general anatomy of the dog with chalks, then set about to capture the animal in oils.  A single portrait sitting would typically take two days, with the artist working from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  The painting would then be completed at her leisure.