There is some debate as to the exact identity of this dog’s breed.
The BBC claims that it is a Clumber spaniel or a Clumber spaniel mix.
One could also claim that it is a depiction of a Welsh springer, or you could point out that it was one of those old red and white spaniels that were once common in the UK, which then replaced by the liver-coated English springers and Norfolk spaniels.
However, the gallery that displays the painting in Lincolnshire claims that it is a “lemon and white water spaniel,” which just happens to resemble a Clumber.
Henry Burton Chalon painted a very similar looking water spaniel in 1797, so it’s very possible that there was once a breed of red and white, somewhat robust water spaniel in England that was relatively common at the end of the eighteenth century.
We want to say this dog was a Clumber or a Welsh springer.
The truth is it was neither, but dogs like this are most likely the ancestors of both of these breeds.
This sort of dog would have also been crossed with St. John’s water dogs and other offshoots of the Newfoundland to make retrievers.
So it may be been a red and white English water spaniel.
This sort of spaniel just isn’t bred anymore, and both Welsh springers and Clumbers, which represent older spaniel lines, than the others have fallen from favor.
But it’s very likely that they derive from dogs like this one.
We just don’t have a complete record of these animals.
We see ghosts in the paintings, and they lure us into speculation.
Maybe it’s this.
Maybe it’s that.
We just don’t know.
But it sure is beguiling.
La palabra “clave” la tienen dos autores o escritores de referencia durante la Edad Media en Europa y más concretamente en Francia; por un lado tenemos a:
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastón_III_de_Foix-Bearne, que defiende el origen Español de los perros de aguas o Spaniel…
Y fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Quiqueran_de_Beaujeu que posteriormente lo afirma en su libro: books.google.com/…/La_Nouvelle_agriculture_ou_I…
Saludos
I’m no expert on ancient breeds, but this looks like a Brittany to me. If it were a little taller with a longer tail, I’d say Irish red and white setter – but nothing about this says clumber spaniel IMO…
Clumbers from that time period were not as effed up as they are today. http://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/stonehenge-clumber-spaniels.jpg
It’s interesting that there seems to have been a bit of preference for a red & white or open coat tricolor in the spaniels but a solid color in the retrievers. Was there any reasoning provided for that? In the Chesapeake, the argument is made that the retriever had to blend in with the background, but I don’t see that being valid for black or “yellow”/”gold” (ranging from red to near white). Spotted dogs tend to be fairly visible, and most “spaniels” are supposed to be close working — but then why the pointers? Or for that matter, the setters? Given that the Newf (and theoretically the st John’s dog) came in black & white, why was this selected against as a color in retrievers?
Don’t quote me on this but I think that the person who created the desire for black retrievers in the UK was either Bond Moore, who really created the show version of the wavy-coated retriever.
The original retrievers stayed at heel while the pointers/setters worked the ground ahead of the hunter. White made the dogs working at a distance more readily visible; the solid color differentiated the retrievers from the setters/pointers for quick identification when the dogs were together in a group. Fashion, of course, also had its influence as well.
White that makes the dog so visible is not desired on a dog used for water fowling, as the ducks will flare away out of gun range if they see it. The yellow/red retrievers can blend in well with autumn fiields and foliage.
And white on spaniels is helpful when they are working in heavy cover or the wooded areas where woodcock and some other game birds are hunted. Our black cocker, on the other hand, was well nigh invisible!
http://books.google.com/books?id=_0EDAAAAQAAJ&lpg=PA29&ots=43ziYKULmr&dq=idstone%20black%20retriever&pg=PA136#v=onepage&q&f=false
makes sense. There’s real reasons for the colors that are preferred in herding breeds vice “livestock guardian breeds” and it often tallies with the colors of the livestock involved (white sheep don’t predominate in some countries as they do in others). And there seem to be clear historical reasons for sizes in herding dogs. Show standards eliminated some of the variation (such as brindle and possibly merle in Belgian Shepherds), but there was a logic. It seemed to me that there must have been one for the gun dogs as well. Your explanation makes very good sense.
The reason why Chesapeakes are yellow to red variants or liver is because we used our retrievers almost solely for waterfowl hunting. Waterfowl are by nature wild and because they were American, heavily hunted and very wary of people. We needed dogs to be camouflaged.
The British retriever culture was essentially a land-based game bird and rabbit and hare shooting culture. Most of these animals were cultivated on estates and were not heavily hunted until the season began. You needed a black dog not only to tell them apart but a black dog is a lot easier to see in broad daylight. With so many guns going off around, it’s a precaution to keep someone from accidentally shooting the dog, which is standing at heel while the guns are being fired.
Whatever it is, it is a handsome dog. Red and white is my favorite dog color – kooikerhondje, welsh, or cocker spaniel. I suppose the spaniel landrace left plenty of room for variety, so long as the dog had the correct temperament and retrieving drive. And if this dog produced a runt puppy, it could have contributed to any one of the toy spaniel breeds.
It looks to have a half-tail. Are Clumbers born with stub tails, or are they docked?
They are docked. For some reason, the Welsh springer and the Clumber are the ones that are most often undocked in the United States:
http://retrieverman.net/2011/03/03/more-undocked-clumbers/
It would probably have been known as a Blenheim spaniel. They bred a lot of them at the palace. & i’d guess its smaller than either a welsh springer or Clumber . There is a stuffed specimin in the natural history museum Tring that looks very similar. Not much ear feather and a half docked tail