Dog Etching No. 6
Signed Print

While most of Hockney’s portraits of his pet dachshunds Stanley and Bodgie show the pair in full length repose, here the artist has chosen to focus just on the head of one of the dogs. With just a handful of lines and the beautiful addition of shading, the artist manages to convey the peaceful countenance and elegant features of the sausage dog, who has his eyes shut in sleep. A cushion is lightly sketched out becoming a frame for the composition and adding to the feeling of comfort and safety in this image. Hockney began sketching the dogs when he adopted his first pair of dachshunds in 1987. What began as a quick drawing exercise soon took on more importance in his oeuvre however, as he began drawing directly onto an etching plate to create multiples of these heartfelt portraits and later even turned to painting to depict his canine sitters in full colour. While they are undeniably portraits of love, they can also be read as portraits of loss; Hockney described his motivation for painting his dogs in 1995 as a reaction to losing many friends and lovers to the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, saying “I wanted desperately to paint something loving. … I felt such a loss of love I wanted to deal with it in some way.”