"Dogs don't make mistakes," the famous detective Sherlock Holmes once said. Perhaps this is also the explanation why man's oldest pet has long been a common motif among painters as a hunting companion, playmate or lap dog. In 1873 the umbrella organization for dog breeding was founded in Great Britain. With the establishment of breeding regulations, dog portraits gained enormous popularity at that time. Many painters specialized in depicting animals and had great success with it. Among them was Alfred Duke, a British artist of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Duke obviously felt a deep affection for dogs and studied them very carefully. His love is reflected in his paintings, in which the animals are preferably depicted in everyday situations, such as hunting, but also at home at the table, in front of the fireplace or interacting with other two- or four-legged friends. Duke's presentation focuses on the posture, expression and movement of the dogs, convincingly capturing not only the personality of the individual animal, but also the character of the different breeds. The painting Full Cry shows a pack of hunting dogs that has picked up the scent of a prey animal and is now in full pursuit of it. With their stretched bodies, gleaming eyes and flattened ears, they embody the hunting instinct that is innate in them. Duke is a master at capturing both the movement and concentration of the dogs. They are perceived as a group in which individual expressions are absent. In contrast, when the painter depicts dogs in a domestic setting, the individuality of the animal is foregrounded. The Uninvited Guest shows three puppies sitting outside the door of a farmhouse, eyeing a magpie. Their reactions to the bird vary, ranging from curious to skeptical and wait-and-see. Duke also deals with snapshots of dogs giving in to their primal urges and stealing people's food. Thus, in the painting Temptation, a hungry Jack Russell terrier eyes a piece of ham on a plate, while in Fish Is Cheap Today, a representative of the same breed steals a fish at the market. The latter work gets its title from the advertising slogan that is still half visible on the right edge of the picture, ironically contrasting with the dog that is helping itself to free food. In Duke's work, human figures are absent, giving the animals a dignity of their own, distinct from their role as "man's best friend."

Yet Alfred Duke's four-legged friends live in an idealized world. Even in his hunting pictures there is no evidence of dirt, blood or pain. It was different with his colleagues on the continent. They were not afraid to depict even the suffering of street dogs. Art expert William Secord once summed it up this way: "The British like it, simply put, pretty."