Painter and his Pug
Painter and his Pug is a 1745 self-portrait by William Hogarth, showing his pug Trump. Hogarth began the painting about ten years earlier and originally planned to wear formal clothes, but switched to informal dress during the process. In the portrait, Hogarth appears as the artist while Trump sits beside him, making the dog feel real rather than just an image. The pug ignores the painting, the books, and the palette, which features Hogarth’s Line of Beauty. An ironic touch is that the cloth behind the dog seems to pop out of the painting. The work is in the Tate Gallery collection.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 13:55 (CET).