This dog’s name was Breeze, and he was a golden retriever.
But he wasn’t one of those golden retrievers.
He was alive over twenty years before the breeding program at Guisachan began, so we can’t call him a golden retriever as we know them today.
Instead, it is more accurate to call him a “golden-colored retriever.”
Some art sites list this dog as a golden retriever, but they forget to check the actual history on the dogs we call golden retrievers. The dates simply don’t line up.
This dog was alive before retrievers ever got the distinction of being called “wavy-coated retrievers” and “curly-coated retrievers.”
However, he was a feathered dog with a waviness to his coat.
But the actual distinctions between wavy and curly-coated retrievers as defined strains dates only to about 1860.
Before that, retrievers were the gentlemen’s lurchers– performance-bred mongrels that were selected solely for performance.
Not all of these dogs had ancestry from the various dogs of Newfoundland. Some were terriers and terrier crosses. Others were greyhounds and collie-type farm dogs. There was always a contingent of regional water spaniels, as well as retrieving setters and the odd retrieving pointer or beagle.
This engraving by Landseer was one of his early works, and was done in black-and-white. (Printing in color didn’t come into use until many years later). This particular example may be a restrike or a reproduction; in any case, the coloring was added by hand after printing– who knows how long, could well have been many years. So the color of this example may or may not well represent the actual dog that Landseer used as his subject.
A restrike is a print made from the original plates, but long after the first run done by the artist, usually after the artist’s death and the expiration of copyright. I have a restrike of a large Landseer engraving, printed and handcolored a more than a century after the originals were produced.
In any case, Scottie is correct in that the dog depicted may have been a retriever of golden coloring, but it was/is not of the breed now known as Golden Retriever.