Several sources have this dog listed as an Irish water spaniel. It dates to about 1880.
However, it is by Charles César Ferdinand de Condamy, who was French.
The dog is also pointing, which is not a typical Irish water spaniel behavior.
It also lacks both the profuse coat and rat tail of the water spaniel, and it is pointing.
Irish water spaniels are not pointing dogs.
The pointing behavior and the water spaniel-esque features strongly suggest that the breed in this particular painting is an Epagneul Pont-Audemer.
France loves its regional hunting dogs, and this breed was endemic to the Pont-Audemer commune on the River Risle.
Its exact origins aren’t known, but it is most likely a cross between the Epagneul Picard, which is often liver roan, and the Irish water spaniel, which is solid liver.
The Epagneul Picard is one of the “pointing spaniels” from France that is very common in both Normandy and Picardy. There is also blue roan breed of Epagneul Picard that was developed through crossing them with blue belton English setters, and the Epagneul Pont-Audemer is now being preserved as part of the French society for the Epagneul Picard.
The Epagneul Pont-Audemer nearly went extinct during the Second World War, and it was revived from an inbreeding depression through use of Irish water spaniel blood.
The bred was never common, so when the war came, it didn’t have large enough population size to sustain itself.
Now, I can see why this breed was misidentified in the painting. Very few people have even heard of this breed, and it very nearly went extinct.
If my informed speculation here is true, then this may be the only painting of an Epagneul Pont-Audemer from the nineteenth century.
Which means whoever owns it owns something pretty special!
Not the Irish Water Spaniel of the M’Carthy strain, certainly, but possibly a water spaniel of Irish ancestry. And it is quite possible that the water spaniel of that era shared some relationships with the Pont-Audemer — as well as those now-extinct varieties, the English Water Spaniel and the Tweed Water Spaniel.
Perhaps the pictured dog is holding a point, or perhaps just hesitating before leaping in for the flush. The behaviors are related, of course. Too bad there isn’t some provenance for the painting.
Well, hmmm. Pointing is definitely not supposed to be typical of IWS.
However, my girl Tooey failed a Spaniel Hunt Test last weekend because she pointed. http://patricedodd.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/new-lessons-learned/.
And Cooper regularly points when we go hunting — and we like because it gives the gunners time to get their guns ready, and he does eventually flush. But we’ve been advised by serious IWS people not to tell anybody — you’re not “anybody”, are you? :)
And the tail. That does not look like an IWS tail. Tooey’s tail is not as rat-like as desired. It has coat it’s full length, but it gets sparser as it approaches the tip, rather than being fluffy as in the picture.
The color is what seems wrong to me. Too orange, not enough puce.
How many of these dogs were ever in France?
My guess is not too many.
So a spaniel is just supposed to run into the brush and flush out the birds? I thought there was supposed to be some hesitation involved – seems like it’d be better to give the hunter some signal that there is a bird before the flush actually occurs.
My sister had a Cavalier that would point. The dog would quarter a field (sort of), and when she found something, her tail would stop (typical Cav, she normally wagged constantly), she’d drop her head and become very still, or sometimes creep a step or two then freeze. My sister had read somewhere that this behavior was a throwback to hunting before firearms – the dog would freeze so that the hunter could throw a net over the birds. True?
It is true.
Flushing dogs just send the bird up, and you have to hunt with them close in and you have to read their body language to know when they are close to a bird.
An untrained pointing dog is just a flushing dog that points, which is just stalking behavior, before going in. These dogs have been bred for exaggerated stalking behavior, but if you don’t train it, it’s just a flushing dog that give you a lot of notice before it does!
Little bit like an american water spaniel maybe but as you say, not much like the Irish water spaniel?
It also looks a great deal like the water spaniels (both Large and Small) depicted in Thomas Bewick’s “History of Quadrupeds” circa 1807, except that Bewick’s are parti-colored. This sort of dog persisteduntil at least the late 19th century– and is still represented by descendants such as the American Water Spaniel. Also, there were water spaniels in Ireland other than the type we know today as the Irish Water Spaniel, which was pretty much the creation of Justin McCarthy (or M’Carthy, depending on the reference).
One of my ancestors from Cork hunted with a dog that looked a lot like this. Family lore says that he taught the dog to catch fish in the shallows of the Blackwater River. However, he was caught and nearly sent to Australia. I’ll send you a pic of him and his dog. It was taken around 1907.
I don’t know quite how it is now, but back in the eighties and nineties the occasional Irish bred soft coated wheaten terrier would be brought over on tyhe ferry from Ireland to appear at a championship show in England. They tended to look quite different from those bred in England at the time as of course they had every right to be different since it was their breed after all. Nevertheless, some of the English exhibitors got quite snooty (as we say) about it. But then some of the English exhibitors also got snooty about American bred Wheaten terriers, but they were glad, nevertheless, when I introduced the first American dog to our inbred mixture. More came after that.
wild guess, could it be an early version of the Picardy Spaniel? The coat is pretty wavy (so one might wonder if a dash of poodle were employed), but given that the Picardy Spaniel is supposedly English setter x spaniels, it might be a precursor??
or some relation to the Saint-Usuge Spaniel?
I think a lot of us know very little about the European continental breeds, especially those that aren’t registered with AKC or in the UK kennel club. Would love to know more.
Peggy Richter
ah! looked up Epagneul Pont-Audemer and see that at least the club merged with that for the Picardy Spaniel. So my wild guess isn’t so off the wall. So how are they related to the Saint-Usuge Spaniel ?