This painting is by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and this dog looks very much like a dachshund. The implication of the bag of pheasant and rabbit is that this dog flushed both to the gun.
This dog has some bassety features, which you sometimes see in American smooth dachshunds even now.
(Painting courtesy of Nara Uusihanni).
I agree. As I said before, we used to keep dachshunds, warts and all, and bred a couple of litters. The natural tendency, we found, was for the backs of our puppies to become slightly shorter on average, maybe a case of Nature trying to be sensible? This is why I think it will be possible for extreme exaggerations encouraged by idiotic breeders to be reversed provided there is the pressure and encouragement for this to happen. I’m optimistic that the growing consensus for this to happen will win the day for some breeds. Other stupid designs may have to be reinvented or disappear.
I’m not quite so optimistic about internal disease factors in some breeds, but that is for future breeders to deal with as the old school of breeders thins out.
Thought it looked familiar….I have asumed it was painted in sweden since the dog was owned by a swede and have apeared in some swedish dog books .But after reading a bit about the painter and the dog owner it seams unlikely (second picture on the right) http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax
Hmmm. That’s still somewhat possible. Tessin was ambassador to France during the time period in which this panting was done.
Swedes would have had a stronger connection to the German-speaking countries through having a common religion and centuries of trade.
Oh, the crown prince at the time was a Holsteiner.
That makes it even more likely.
Hey Scotty, if you don’t mind my asking, what part of Holstein did your ancestors come from. Mine were from Wahlstedt and the surrounding smaller towns.
Nordstrand.
Ahh, North Frisia. There are a lot of on-line genealogical records for the peninsula–some w/ English indexes.
BTW; current DNA studies look to be genetically separating the Danes from the Swedes and Norwegians. The former being in an R2 subgroup closely associated w/ the Dutch, its predecessor thought to have arisen in Central Asia, the latter in I subgroups thought to have arisen in situ after the last iceage.
My family came from that part of England known as the Danelaw, where vikings settled in about the ninth century. But recent DNA studies show that basically we are well mixed on these islands and getting more so by the day. Yet people still like to cling on to false delusions about ‘racial purity’ – even less relevant in the diversity which is America, one would think.
My wife’s first language is Welsh, which makes her the most ‘ancient’ of ancient Brits, but she doesn’t go on about it.