Tamara Looking At The Dog In A Lucien Freud Painting

My wife Tamara loves dogs. She has taught me to observe them on the street – the determined ones, the ones who trot along so happily because life is just so good, the stiff-legged ones who spring along like toys – every kind of dog.

So in the National Gallery for the Lucien Freud exhibition, Tamara noticed the dog that figured in several paintings. When we got home after the exhibition she found an article from shortly after Freud’s death, about Pluto the whippet.

From AnOther magazine, July 20, 2012

Freud’s principal interests centred on women and dogs; he owned a number of dogs over the years including his gangly pet whippet Pluto, a particular favourite. Freud acquired Pluto in 1988, making an etching of her as a pup that same year and continuing to charter her development through his work until her demise in 2003.