"Two Bulldogs-Best of Friends" 
Maud Earl (English, 1863-1943)
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right
24 1/4 x 18 (30 x 23 1/4) inches
 
In the pantheon of 19th and early 20th century painters of purebred dogs, Alice Maud Earl ranks among the very best and most highly regarded dog portraitists. 
 
Her clientele were the most prominent dog breeders and dog fanciers of the day on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, as her reputation grew during the 19th century in the world dog shows and pure dogs, she came to the attention of Queen Victoria and the royal family. The Queen was a great lover of dogs and dog paintings. At any one time the Queen had as many as 70 dogs at her kennels at Windsor, and the Queen's favorite artists such as Sir Edwin Landseer and Gourlay Steele depicted many of her dogs. Her patronage was not limited to her court artists, however, and Maud Earl was summoned to Windsor to paint her favorite Collie, a breed which Queen Victoria had been instrumental in popularizing.
 
Queen Victoria was not the only of Miss Earl's royal patrons. She had often painted dogs belonging to the Prince and Princess of Wales, Albert and Alexandra, the future King and Queen of England. Among the most famous of these canine sitters was the Borzoi Alex, belonging to the Princess, who was so admired that dog fanciers lined up on queue just to catch a glimpse of him.
 
Maud Earl was born in the West End of London. Maud's profession was the continuation of a family tradition. Her father George, her uncle Thomas Earl and her half-brother Percy Earl were also animal painters of note. George Earl, an avid sportsman and noted sporting painter, was his daughter’s first teacher and ensured she studied the anatomy of her subjects, drawing dog, horse and human skeletons to refine her skills. She later said that her father’s instruction had given her ability that set her apart from other dog painters. After her father's tutelage Maud went on to study at Royal Female School of Art, which was later incorporated into the Central School of Art.
 
Maud Earl soon came to specialize in animals, and in dogs in particular, since she had a special affinity for them. As the artist pointed out in an interview in the November 1898 issue of The Young Woman, "You can't paint dogs unless you understand them; I don't mean merely from the fancier's point of view. You must know whether they are happy and comfortable, and if not, why not. You must know how to quiet them when they become excited and nervous. You must know all their little likes and dislikes, and this knowledge comes from long experience."
 
Starting in 1884, Earl exhibited around twelve works at the Royal Academy starting with a stag painting Early Morning in 1884. She also exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists and at the Paris Salon. In 1897 Earl had an exhibition in which she showed 70 paintings of 48 different breeds of dog.
According to William Secord:
“Describing how she went about painting her canine subjects, Miss Earl explained that she never used photographs, for she preferred to paint what she saw, rather than what the camera saw. Rather, she posed the canine subject on a sort of portable stool on castors, which made it easy to move about. An attendant usually accompanied the dog, but more often than not, Miss Earl was the one to settle the dog so that he might pose quietly. First, she sketched in the general anatomy of the dog with chalks, then set about to capture the animal in oils. A single portrait sitting would typically take two days, with the artist working from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The painting would then be completed at her leisure.”
 
Maud Earl's career can be said to have developed through four styles. The first, which is more typical of her work from 1880 to until about 1900, is of fully finished, rich and naturalistic paintings with a landscape or interior setting. The second distinguishable style of the figures and landscapes are painted in her earlier, highly finished style, but the perimeter of the paintings is left loose and sketchy. In the third type of painting, the background appears to have disappeared almost entirely, except for a few sketchy renderings which either establish the dog in a landscape or somehow relate to the dog's country of origin. 
 
Upon to moving to the United States, Maud entered what she called her oriental style. During this time, she painted delicate pictures of birds and dogs, and she believed these to be some of her best works. Towards the latter part of her career, she continued to paint stylized dog portraits during the 1930s.
 
It seems curious that an artist so successful in England would suddenly move to America, but the onset of World War I had forever changed the world that she had known and loved. Her work had always been well received in America, and in her words, "Then came the war, and that finished everything. Before America came into the struggle, I came, here, to New York.” The new commissions came almost immediately such was her fame and renown by the time of her relocation. 
Secord: 
“In an interview in Country Life magazine in May of 1921, she reported that she seldom did dog portraits anymore, stating that if they were not decorative, they were not worth painting. This could certainly not be said of the bird and dog paintings which she was painting around this time, which were the epitome of elegance and decorative restraint. Proclaiming that she was working in the Chinese mode (actually, her work of this period has a closer kinship with the Japanese), she painted extraordinary panels of exotic birds, sometimes in anecdotal situations with dogs, or portraits of dogs which because of her new style were elevated to what she considered "the decorative." 
Earl became famous during the Victorian Era, a time when women were not expected to make their living at painting. Nevertheless, she developed a select International clientele with her fame spreading ever wider by the publication of her images in books and print form.  
 
Maud Earl left an extraordinary body of work as the result of painting dogs for 50 years. Maud Earl died in New York in 1943 and is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
Multiple sources for research, though especially the writings of William Secord.