Best in Show: The Dog in Art from the Renaissance to Today

Dogs have been featured in works of art in various ways—from primary subjects to supporting characters to props. Best in Show is the most up-to-date, comprehensive survey of the dog as shown in painting, sculpture, works on paper, and photography from the end of the sixteenth century to today.

This beautifully produced book features sixty works by such illustrious artists as Francis Bacon, Gustave Courbet, Salvador Dalí, Lucian Freud, Thomas Gainsborough, Edouard Manet, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Andrew Wyeth, and many more. Four fascinating essays by distinguished scholars discuss the dog in the context of the art of the 16th through the 21st centuries; examine the purebred and how breeds have developed and changed over the years; and outline the results of scientific inquiry over the centuries regarding the nature of dogs.

Best in Show brilliantly illuminates the captivating and intriguing history of the dog in art––offering myriad interpretations and irrefutable reasons for celebrating “the artist’s best friend.”

Edgar Peters Bowron is Audrey Jones Beck Curator of European Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Carolyn Rose Rebbert is Curator of Science at the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Greenwich, Connecticut. Robert Rosenblum is Henry Ittleson, Jr., Professor of Modern European Art at New York University, and author of The Dog in Art: From Rococo to Post-Modernism. William Secord is a dog-painting historian and author of Dog Painting: The European Breeds and Dog Painting 1840-1940: A Social History of the Dog in Art, among others.