Brown and White Norfolk or Water Spaniel

Brown and White Norfolk or Water Spaniel from 1778 by George Stubbs is a detailed canine portrait demonstrating his expertise in painting dogs as well as horses. Gun dogs were essential to the field sports culture that Stubbs documented. Stubbs's oil technique was grounded in exhaustive anatomical study—he spent eighteen months dissecting horses at a Lincolnshire farmhouse before painting the plates for his Anatomy of the Horse (1766)—producing an exactitude of musculature and bone structure...

The spaniel is rendered with the same anatomical precision Stubbs brought to his horse paintings, the dog's coat texture and muscular structure carefully observed.