This painting is by Maud Earl and dates to 1906. This dog is a retriever of the Tweedmouth strain, but it is in the possession of Giles Stephen Holland Fox-Strangways, 6th Earl of Ilchester. In the 1950’s, he would play a major role in debunking the Russian circus dog “creation myth” about the origins of the golden retriever. As we all know, the 1st Baron Tweedmouth had kept meticulous records of the dogs used in his breeding program, and because the 6th Earl of Ilchester counted the baron as a great uncle, he had access to these records. With the help of Elma Stonex, a breed historian, the entire edifice of the Russian circus dog story was destroyed.
The breeding initial breeding between Nous and Belle that founded the Tweedmouth strain produced a dog named Ada, who was given to Henry Edward Fox-Strangways, 5th Earl of Ilchester. He was the father of the 6th Earl of Ilchester and was the 1st Baron Tweedmouth’s nephew. She founded a line of retrievers that eventually became known as Melbury.
This particular dog looks very much like a modern golden retriever of the working-type. It is dark gold in color and does not have that much feathering.
Interestingly, this dog would not be the only golden that Maud Earl would paint. She also painted St. Hubert’s Peter, a Russian yellow retriever that was bred by Col. William Le Poer Trench, the man who essentially fabricated the whole Russian circus dog story. Trench presented the dog to George V in 1914, and the account of the presentation of the dog and the commission of Maud Earl to paint him appeared in Country Life. Trench called his dogs “Russian yellow retrievers” and held the kennel prefix “St. Hubert’s” in honor of the patron saint of hunters.
I doubt that anyone would have made the connection that these two dogs represented the same strain, for Trench made a lot of hay that his dogs were a different breed from “flat-coats (yellow),” but anyone with halfway decent vision and a modestly logical mind can see that they were of the same stock.
I do find that the depictions of the St. Hubert’s dogs show them to be somewhat ugly, coarsely built animals. Judging from Maud Earl’s depiction of Peter, he was very similar to what we would recognize as a brown-pigmented golden of the working type.
When he was the Duke of York, George V had shot over goldens at Guisachan. Queen Victoria had also given him the title of Earl of Inverness, and the Guisachan house is very close to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.
That said, I’ll do a post on St. Hubert’s Peter and George V soon.
One does realize how much retrievers– and goldens in particular– were meant to be the servants of the nobility and the elites in British society.
These were not the dogs of the average person.
With no access to lands for hunting or shooting, what use would such a dog be?
“but anyone with halfway decent vision and a modestly logical mind can see that they were of the same stock.”
I wonder if these people were given such credence because they tended to be wealthy and influential.
Trench was given credence because he got a former ghillie (a gamekeeper) at Guisachan to make up a story about how the dogs were derived from Russian circus dogs.
He either got the keeper to make it up or the keeper decided to have fun with a very easily fooled Anglo-Irishman.
It wasn’t just Trench who believed it. Everyone did. Winifred Charlsworth, the real founder of the breed, swore by it.
And I think they were more willing to believe in it because it could be used as a very way of explaining why the breed had to be separate from the flat-coat.
I have a picture of the very same lookin Yellow Retriever, as the one of Lord of Ilchester. In it the dog is about to save a soldier in the WW 1. To me both of these dogs look tall and clumsy, with a strong, long muzzle like that of hounds’.
Off topic, but you’ve reached #1 on http://www.dogtopsite.com/ !
Congratulations.
Maud Earl was a consummate painter of dogs. (Her father, George Earl, was notable as well). The painting of the standing dog with pheasant at his feet, which you state is a portrait of St. Huberts Peter, probably does not represent that dog. Photographs of the St Huberts original dogs, including Peter, do not much resemble the dog in that painting (best known as “Serving the Gun”), being different in coat and color. The photos that I’ve seen of the St Huberts dogs, were in the possession of a relative of Col Trench’s.
While Mrs Charlesworth certainly did promulgate the story of the circus dog origin, there’s little doubt that she also was aware of the Flat- or Wavy-Coat background in the breed, but chose not to mention it.
The painting shown at the head of this post is titled “Tending the Coops” and is in the USA.
My source for that painting is Valerie Foss’s book: http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Retrievers-Today-Valerie-Foss/dp/0876051840, p. 14.
One of these dogs is supposed to be St. Hubert’s Peter:
http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/russianretrievers.jpg?w=450&h=334
I’ve seen a black and white photo of some of them in which they are very Newfoundlandish.
Is this the photo you’re talking about?
The photo of two men with group of dogs is in Mrs Charlesworth’s book. One of the men is said to be Col. Trench. The dogs are not individually identified. The photos that I referred to were different, photos of individual dogs. They are with a person in Scotland.
The painting of three dogs is by Wright Barker. The dogs are usually identified as St Huberts Peter, Paul, and Czar, if I remember correctly.
I wonder if Maud Earl could have idealized Peter a bit, seeing as the dog had been presented to the king and she wanted to make him look a bit more like a fine flat-coated retriever. The dog looks a lot like her depiction of a well-known flat-coat:
http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/flat-coat.jpg?w=500&h=344
I doubt that the painting would have been misidentified because there was so much fanfare over the presentation of Peter to George V.
And this painting has been listed as St. Hubert’s Peter in several different sources, incuding this one in Estonian : http://www.meiepere.ee/muu/touajalugu.html
If Peter is the same dog in the back right of the St. Hubert’s trio painting, then I think they are the same dog.
Successful portraitists often tend to do what will please their buyers. A bit of “improvement” is certainly not uncommon.
Went to my files last night…the painting “Serving the Gun” was done no later than 1906 and was one of a series of gundog paintings. Trench’s litter containing St Huberts Peter, Paul, Prince etc was whelped in 1911, St Huberts Czar a bit later. Trench did not apply for the affix “St Huberts” until after 1910. So I think it unlikely that the dog depicted in “Serving the Gun” is a St Huberts dog– more likely, the same or similar dog to the “Ilchester retriever” in the paining “Tending the Coops”.
However….there is yet another portrait of a yellow retriever by Maud Earl, the frame of which carries a plate with the name of St Huberts Peter. Don’t know the exact date. The pose of the dog is very similar to “Serving the Gun”, except reversed; the dog is facing left. This painting was once in the possession of James Palmer-Douglas (a distant relative of Col Trench, and a Golden historian in his own right) but was sold at auction around 1976 to a buyer, identity unknown. Quite likely it is this painting which got confused with the similar one done earlier, “Serving the Gun”.
The Estonian site seems quite extensive and informative. Although I can’t read the language, I think they have misidentified 1st Lord Tweedmouth in the photo of gentleman in military uniform — that looks much more like his son Edward (to be 2nd Lord Tweedmouth). The photo of Ishbel Maria (Lady Aberdeen) was taken sometime 1893-95, in Ottawa where her husband was Governor-General at the time; and the gentleman in the photo is her brother, Archibald John Marjoribanks, not her husband John Gordon, Lord Aberdeen. “Lady” is the retriever in both photos with Archie, and “Witch” is the small dog on Ishbel’s lap.
That’s the Russian yellow that I am most familiar with.
That dog has been identified as St. Huberts Prince (born 1911), one of the three in the painting by Wright Barker (who did at least 3 other depictions of St Huberts’ dogs).
Col. Trench was also successful in Irish Water Spaniels around the last decade of the 19th century, although pretty much out of that breed by 1900; his relative Trench O’Rourke then became quite notable in IWS for some years.