Portrait of a King Charles Spaniel in a Landscape

1788 · Private collection

portrait

The King Charles Spaniel was a favourite pet in European courts and, though originally bred as a hunting dog, its small size made it more suited to the life of a lapdog. This canvas is one of a group of paintings of dogs which Hackert executed over more than two decades. Some were his own pets and others belonged to King Ferdinand IV of Naples who was an avid huntsman who took more interest in his hunting dogs than his own children.

About the Artist

Jacob Philipp Hackert

1737 – 1807

German landscape painter, part of a family of painters, active in Italy from 1768. He studied in Berlin under the French painter Le Sueur, who taught him in the classical Baroque style of Dutch landscape, but when he moved to Rome he became one of the "Roman Germans" to turn to Poussin and apply the Neoclassical principles to landscape painting. In 1786 he became court painter to Ferdinand IV of Naples. He was a sensitive upholder of the ideal landscape tradition of Claude, which he seasoned with touches of Romanticism . Much of his prolific output was devoted to views of famous sites, which were eagerly sought by foreign visitors to Italy. He came from a family of artists and often collaborated with his brother Johann Gottlieb Hackert (1744-73). Goethe met Hackert in 1787 and wrote his biography in 1811.

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