bulldogs on the beach

courtesy theathenaeum.com. public domain

What an odd work this is, almost Surrealist.  A pack of bulldogs in a hyper-realist style are plopped on a deserted shore, with a collage-like effect as if they had been cut out and pasted there.  I'd never have guessed this artist painted for British (and other) royalty.  This is Reuben Ward Binks, Bulldogs on the Beach, from around 1914.  Binks was an English artist who died in 1950 after a long, industrious career as one of the world's premier dog painters, including that time he went to India to paint 150 artworks for the Maharajah of Patiala.