Dog Days

Whether in the nineteenth century or today, anyone observing the daily activity in our streets, sidewalks, yards, and neighborhoods will find dogs and their human companions. They serve as beloved family pets, guard homes from pests and strangers, accompany hunters and farmers as they work, and participate in sports and competitions. Their constant presence in our lives has made them natural subjects for artists, advertisers, and photographers. The Long Island Museum’s collections reflect two centuries of these interactions between people and pooches.                                                                                                                                              Jack on porch of Satterly House,Main Street, Setauket, NY, 1899 Photographic print on board. Bequest of Robert Bradley Fritz, 2005. 

Bequest of Ward Melville, 1977. William Sidney Mount painted several portraits of dogs during his career, with this the only known surviving example. As he wrote in his diary, “July 4th, 1858, I made a drawing on canvass of Mr. Copcutt’s horse. 5th – painted the horse and dog. 6th – dead colored his dog standing up in a chair. 8th – painted on the dog.” Francis Copcutt was an English-born writer and lumber dealer living in New York. This painting of Copcutt’s dog, Neptune, was sold to a third party after being exhibited at the National Academy of Design. In exchange for five books and a “flood” of mahogany panels, Mount painted a different oil sketch for Copcutt of Neptune in 1865, after the dog had passed away. Copcutt’s “Esquimaux Dog” closely resembles what is now called a Canadian Eskimo Dog – an extremely rare breed in America then and now.     

Gift of Ward Melville, 1962. These two unusual prints celebrate the brief fame of Ashwood and Deacon. Thomas Clark of Marion, NY, purchased a stallion named Ashwood in Indiana in 1897, and the following year entered him in races at county fairs in western New York. Clark soon trained his horse to go around the track without a guide or driver – making Ashwood into a “Guideless Wonder.” Around 1900 Clark created a new trick: he trained his bulldog Deacon to ride in a wire cage attached to either a saddle on Ashwood or to a cart that he pulled. As the Newark-Union Gazette recalled in 1912 in Ashwood’s obituary, “The novelty of a bull dog riding or driving a horse appealed to everybody, and Tom Clark and his famous guideless wonder, now driven by a bull dog, was billed at every fair of any consequence in Central and Western New York and also in northern towns of Pennsylvania.” After four seasons of performing, Clark retired the act.        

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ward Melville, 1976. A late contemporary of William Sidney Mount, William Moore Davis (1829 - 1920) became a full-time painter in the final years of Mount’s career. Davis spent most of his life in Port Jefferson where he painted the local landscape and genre scenes such as this painting. Two boys have finally found their dog that managed to break the cord tying him to an old copper kettle intended as an anchor to keep him from wandering off. Davis’s use of a woodshed in the title and setting implies some sort of imminent punishment for the wayward dog.    

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ward Melville, 1976. Dogs brave all types of weather with their owners. Here, an African-American musician and a boy make their way to a dance at a nearby inn or tavern. The dog’s leash is tied to the rope around the man’s waist. Under his arm is a banjo wrapped in cloth to protect it from the cold and moisture.    

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ward Melville, 1958. This farm collie looks on skeptically as his owner decides to trade hats with a scarecrow. Originating in the United Kingdom as herding dogs, collies arrived in America with the first English and Scottish settlers in the seventeenth century. Born decades before the rise of standardized breeds, this dog closely resembles today’s Welsh Sheepdog and Smooth Border Collie.         

Gift of Bettijune Kruse in memory of Benedict W. Kruse (1925-2001) and Martin A. Kruse (1951-1998), 2007. Born in Manhattan in 1888, Alexander Kruse was a student of the Ashcan School, studying under George Bellows, John Sloan, Henry McBride, and other artists. Moving to Brooklyn in the 1920s, Kruse eventually taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, served as an art critic for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for more than twenty years, and had a regular column in the New York Post, “Art with a Small ‘A’”. Kruse also authored the popular book, How to Draw and Paint (1953). His own prints, drawings, and paintings encompass scenes of daily life in the streets of New York City, Fire Island, and Los Angeles, where he eventually died in 1972. This painting of a bicycle parking lot on Fire Island includes a person in a t-shirt and overalls walking a dog on a leash. The small detail represents the modern status of dogs on Long Island: as beloved pets that we take on daily walks in our urban and suburban homes, and that often join us on vacation as members of the family.     

Gift of August Belmont IV, 1978. August Belmont Jr. was one of the founders of the Meadow Brook Club (later the Meadow Brook Hounds) in 1881 in Garden City to promote fox hunting and other outdoor sports. In the fall of 1884, while serving as acting Master of the Hunt, Belmont commissioned Gustav Muss-Arnolt to paint the young club. Completed in 1885, the New York artist captured in painstaking detail the participants in the hunt and the location. An accompanying key identified twenty-seven people by name – including future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt – the names of twenty-one of their horses, and the names of twelve of the more than two dozen English Foxhounds. The Meadow Brook Hounds continued to hold regular live foxhunts in Nassau and Suffolk counties until disbanding in 1971.    

Whether riding in a sleigh, carriage, or early automobile, passengers were often exposed to the elements. In wintertime, thick wool lap robes such as this one were indispensable in keeping people warm and dry. The bright warm colors offered a cheery counterpoint to a drab winter palette, and this golden retriever imparts a friendly disposition upon the wearer.