The Painter and his Pug
1745 self-portrait by William Hogarth in Tate Britain, depicting the artist with his pug Trump
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The Painter and his Pug is an oil self-portrait by William Hogarth, completed in 1745 though begun roughly a decade earlier, now held by Tate Britain in London.[1] The painting depicts Hogarth beside his pet pug, Trump, who sits indifferent to the artistic and literary symbols around him — a palette, painted with a winding serpentine curve that Hogarth would later formalize as the Line of Beauty, and a stack of books by Shakespeare, Milton, and Swift.[2] Read as a vanitas composition, the dog's unimpressed presence amid these symbols of artistic ambition has been interpreted as a wry comment on the emptiness of human achievement.
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References
- ↑ "William Hogarth, Self Portrait."Tate.Retrieved 2026-10-02.
- ↑ "Hogarth's Line of Beauty: Why We Love the Serpentine Curve."Lyon & Turnbull.Retrieved 2026-10-02.