you'll have to brush that coat

Yale Center for British Art, John Mellon Collection (PD)

John Frederick Herring, Sr. (British; 1795-1865) started out as a coachman who painted horses after hours, and by the end of his life was an animal painter under Queen Victoria's patronage.  I think I saw Victoria coming after looking at this oil, "A Hound and a Bearded Collie seated on a Hunting Coat," from 1855.  There's an intimacy and sentiment here that was just her sort of thing.  Yet Herring also masterfully kept the subject of their gaze out of the frame, leading us to fill in the blank.  Such yearning gazes.  Are they directed at a beloved human?  Or a scrap of meat headed their way?  By the way, notice how the warm orangey-red coat casts a glow over the painting and makes them both radiant in their expectation.  Oh, to be a dog about to get something good.