The Companions

Every portrait of a person with an animal has to decide who the picture is about. The Companions decides that it is about both, and then commits to it properly.

The composition is a dual portrait in the old sense: two sitters, side by side, at the same height, both facing out, both painted with the same seriousness. Your pet is not at your feet and not in your arms. It is in the other chair. That single decision is what makes people stop in front of it, because it is not how animals are usually painted with their owners, and it is much closer to how the relationship actually feels.

The treatment is full old master: warm light falling from one side, a deep umber ground, glazed skin and fur built up in layers, the visible weave of the canvas underneath. Period dress for you, nothing at all for the pet, which is deliberate. Putting a ruff on the dog would turn it into a joke, and this one is not a joke.

It is the portrait people buy for a partner, and it is the one that most often ends up in a hallway or over a fireplace rather than tucked in a study, because it reads as a real painting of two people from across a room.

It works for any animal that can hold a seated pose in a photograph, which is most of them, and it is especially strong for large dogs, where the equal height is literally true rather than staged.