This painting is by Edward Armfield (1817 – 1896), and the bird it is retrieving is a gray partridge, which in North America has the unfortunate name of “Hungarian partridge,” even though it is almost always called the “English partridge” in the United Kingdom. (Some Americans call it a “Hun,” a term that, as German-America, find pretty offensive. We don’t turn Belgian babies into soap!)
The dog looks to be of St. John’s water dog extraction. It has the robust build of that breed, and like many that were imported into the UK during the early nineteenth century, it has feathering.
Of course, the dog likely isn’t of “pure breeding.”
Through much of the nineteenth century, retrievers were the gentry’s equivalent of the poacher’s lurcher. Each shooting nobleman bred retrievers by crossing different types of dog. As we’ve seen, this tradition heavily conflicted with the British dog fancy that came later, which demanded that every retriever be a black dog.
This dog is particularly interesting because it’s red and white. It doesn’t appear to be a liver and white dog at all. The red coloration is the same that appears on golden retrievers and Irish setters. However, it’s also a particolor, which is unlike any golden retriever living today.
But if this dog had been bred to solid black dogs, the recessive red coloration would be carried, and the chances are good that one of its descendants would have been a solid red or gold dog.
I don’t know any specifics about this retriever. I don’t know its name or where it lived. All I know is that it’s a British retriever from the early to middle nineteenth century. If anyone knows any more details, please pass them along.
Based on Armfield’s and other’s paintings, and that setters at that time were not yet as distinctly separated into breeds as they were later, I’d sooner call this dog a retrieving setter. Armfield, Ansdell, and other sporting painters depicted a number of very similar dogs, and before the specialist retrieving dogs came along, there were setters that were trained to retrieve shot game. Not so much waterfowl, but most certainly what we call upland gamebirds.
It’s very likely that some of these retrieving setters are back there behind our retrievers, particularly the wavy- /flat-coated and the Goldens. It’s true that the particolor pattern is not in today’s retrievers (although white markings do occur occasionally), but then there also were solid colored setters in the 19th century, viz. the cream-colored or “fawn”, and the solid black that were known in the Border country.
Additionally, it should be kept in mind that the setters of those days were not he sleek, elegant beauties of today, but generally rather squarely built, sturdy, workmanlike sorts– really not so much different in build from the retriever/water dog types.
I’ve seen those dogs in paintings, which were actually more like Clumber spaniels. However, I think this is a retriever, rather than a setter, just judgine from what it was bringing back. Gray partridge in the UK, were in agricultural lands and driven with spaniels. They were not typically something pointed, unlike the various species of grouse.
Looks like an Irish Red and White Setter to me.
Retriever was not a breed in those days. It was a job.
It is marked like one. but it actually reminds me more of certain water spaniels from the period:
https://retrieverman.net/2010/01/31/an-english-water-spaniel/comment-page-1/
A water spaniel like that, or a mix of setter, water spaniel, Clumber spaniel, and/or St. John’s water dog would get you the type.
For my $.02, calls to mind a Brittany, but with a full tail.
Early toller?
Probably not. Tollers are a very specific kind of retriever that aren’t that closely related to the others.
IMO looks like an earlier, sturdier version of a Brittany Spaniel.