ANTHONY FREDERICK AUGUSTUS SANDYS | Darby in his Basket Kennel

Maas Gallery, London, in 1968;

Hartnoll & Eyre, London, where bought by Sir David Scott in January 1969 for £475

Betty Elzea, Frederick Sandys 1829-1904 - A Catalogue Raisonné, Woodbridge, 2001, pp.13, 153, catalogue no.2.A.1., illustrated as colour plate 6;

Sotheby's, Pictures from the Collection of Sir David and Lady Scott, 2008, p.108, illustrated p.109

It has been suggested that the present picture may be the portrait of a pet belonging to the artist's patron and friend the Reverend James Bulwer. Sandys may have had in mind the pet dog, similarly curly and winsome, in Jan Van Eyck's The Arnolfini Marriage (National Gallery, London), in choosing to paint Darby. Comparison was made in an obituary of Sandys after his death in 1904 to the work of Van Eyck, which may mean that in his lifetime he had made something of a personal cult of the works of the Flemish artist. Betty Elzea, in her catalogue of Sandys's works, also draws comparison between 'Darby' and various of the terrier subjects painted by the older Victorian artist, Edwin Landseer, citing Dignity and Impudence (Tate) of 1839, and Pincher, the Property of Montague Gore, Esq. (c. 1848) as particularly close. The former subject had been engraved and was very widely known.