In 2023, London’s venerable Wallace Collection museum hosted the exhibit Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney, employing the charming hashtag #WallaceWoofs in its social media promotional efforts. David Hockney’s poignant 1995 painting of his beloved dachshunds, featured in the show, was actually a response to the loss of a dear friend, reminding how pets can be such a comfort to us in difficult times. We also particularly loved the self-portrait of artist Lucian Freud (grandson of famed psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud) cozying up with his beautiful pet whippet. 

Later in 2024, and one of our other favorite museums, New York’s Fotografiska, organized an exhibition titled Best in Show: Pets in Contemporary Photography. The chronological proximity of the two exhibits could be taken as coincidence - but let’s face it, we have grown more and more in love with our pets these days, even taking them for hotel stays, and bringing them on airplanes with us for emotional support. 

The exhibit was curated by the animal-loving actress Katherine Heigl, of Grey’s Anatomy fame, and supported by her dog food brand Badlands Ranch. “Art and animals are my big passions,” she enthused to People magazine in an interview about the exhibit. (As if we hadn’t already figured that out.)

But the museum’s executive director Sophie Wright was absolutely spot on when she observed, "Best in Show perfectly captures [through] photography [the] joy, mutual love, and the simple pleasures of companionship.” And dating back to the time of the cave dwellers (likely more than 15,000 years ago), humans have been ever enthusiastically celebrating that companionship in art. 

A 2023 study by the San Francisco based Public Library of Science asked children aged 7 - 11 to draw nature, and it turned out that mammals - including cats and dogs - appeared in more than 80% of the resulting drawings. (Sadly for amphibians and reptiles, the number was only about 15% - sorry guys!) But one need only to log on to the We Love Our Pets section of Etsy, to realize how much our furry friends inspire our creativity. 

What are some of the most notable examples of pets appearing in art over the centuries? Well, Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait (dating to 1434) is instantly recognizable for the richly adorned aristocratic couple at its center. But it’s easy to miss the little pooch standing adoringly at their feet, which it is assumed Van Eyck placed there as a way symbolizing the Italian merchant and his wife’s loyalty and fidelity, since those are the qualities that man's best friend is most known for.

But the dogs are front and center in Paolo Veronese’s 1563 The Wedding Feast at Cana. While guests celebrate with joyful abandon, it is a pair of stoic greyhounds who provide a sense of calm amidst all the hoopla and jubilation - which, as anyone knows who’s ever had experience with the breed, is totally characteristic. 

19th Century Dutch-Belgian painter Henriette Ronner-Knip might ultimately be remembered as the “cat lady” of the Romantic era, with kitty-riffic works like 'Contentment' and 'Kittens at Play' still representing the pinnacle of feline adorableness. And playing to the cliché about women of a certain age and their fondness for cat companionship, she didn’t actually turn to the subject in her work until well into her 60s. 

But many of the most acclaimed artists of the 20th Century also paid loving, sometimes truly amusing tribute to their fur babies. French Fauvist Henri Matisse, for instance, was also a cat enthusiast - especially when it came to his beloved Minouche and Coussi. His 1914 Cat with Red Fish depicts a bright yellow feline mischievously dipping a paw into the fishbowl...perhaps hoping to make a new aquatic friend?

One of the most incredible stories concerns the late Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (Brooklyn slang for “fire hydrant”). The dog would make several other appearances in his work; but this one, completed when he was at the height of his creative powers, would go on to sell for more than $100 million at auction in 2020. That’s one pricey pooch!

Of course, no pet art is so iconic as American legend William Wegman’s photos of his beloved weimaraners. Already a successful artist, by the early 1970s he started making short, conceptual videos starring his particularly handsome canine companions - and they have remained a pop culture sensation for more than five decades.

The saddest fact of pet ownership, surely, is that we are destined to outlive them - with the average life expectancy of a dog being 10 - 13 years, while for cats it is 12 - 18. So immortalizing them in pictures makes for a fitting tribute to just how much friendship and love they bring to our lives during such a brief existence. 

As British artist Tracey Emin so lovingly put it, “My cat is my little soul mate.” And what could possibly be a greater artistic inspiration than that?