Love and Dogs
Saturday mornings in New York are set aside for Union Square farmers’ market, the gathering of farmers from Long Island, New Jersey and upstate New York. Fish still flipping from Montauk, warm Jalapeño bread, eggs laid practically while you wait, rare Peruvian potatoes grown by my friend Rick Bishop, where I hang out for a couple of hours most Saturdays, revert to being a daft young man, sell potatoes and have great fun.
This morning, however, I decide to go to the gym first. I can’t think why.
The gym is across the street from the Hotel Chelsea where I live. It is perfect for the less inclined. At the front desk I am greeted by Nicola, a receptionist, who has been absent for many months, perhaps a year. She has a way of greeting that gladdens the heart, a smile that –as Dorothy Parker said of a child – would melt the glue out of a revolving bookcase.
Obviously, it works with me. I surprise myself by remembering her name and saying how nice it is to see her and then ask her where she has been and what she has been doing. She says, ‘Oh, I fell in love and got my heart broken.’ She’s smiling and yet the pain is obvious to see.
Upstairs in the locker room, while changing and hoping the place doesn’t get too busy, I hear a conversation from behind the row of lockers. A young man asks his companion: ‘So, how are you getting on with her?’ His friend replies, ‘I am consumed by her, I think of her all day at work, coming home, I get to my stop and I find myself running out of the subway I’m so desperate to see her. I am so in love with her it scares me.’
A brief pause and the first man enquires, ‘Is she your first dog?’
Above Jack, 2004
Watercolour and graphite, 13 x 12 inches
Opposite
Spenser, 2009
Watercolour and graphite, 22½ x 30 inches
6
Opposite
Alan Cumming and Honey, 2006
Graphite, 8¼ x 10¼ inches
Right Honey, 2006
Graphite, 8 x 5 inches
Far right Honey, 2004
Graphite, 5½ x 3½ inches
13
Michael and Dino
The process of drawing someone will often take many sittings, sometimes over months or years (though I’d never admit that to a prospective sitter!).
There are people to whom I would like to return, to keep on drawing them indefinitely. With a few I’m able to do so. And there are those who appear briefly, then are gone.
Michael Antonio Pequez was of the latter variety.
A striking figure, he was talking to a friend outside the Hotel Chelsea entrance. Tall, dressed in black with a blue ruffled shirt, a louche strut and a direct stare. His dog, a Boston Terrier named Dino, was the perfect complement, having one blue eye and one brown and a stare to match that of his owner. Michael agreed to sit for me but needed sustenance first, in the form of chilli from Grey’s Papaya over the
street. The drawing went surprisingly well once the chilli had been eaten. There was the foundation for a larger work, but one more session was all I got, after which his phone ceased to be connected.
22
Michael Antonio Pequez and Dino, 2006 Graphite and watercolour, 27 x 60 inches
Far left
Michael Antonio Pequez, November 2006
Graphite, 8¼ x 5 inches
Left Dino, November 2006
Graphite, 8¼ x 5 inches
Opposite Dino, 2007
Graphite and watercolour, 22½ x 30 inches
24
Mayer and Louise
It’s funny the things you remember and the things you don’t. I can’t seem to recall if I named my beloved Bull Terrier Louise after Louise Brooks or Louise Jefferson, Madonna Louise Ciccone or Louise Nevelson. Perhaps it was Louise Fletcher, who played the diabolical Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. After all, my own late and lamented Louise, like her cinematic forebear, was not one to suffer fools gladly. But then again, she also radiated the sassy savoir-faire and polymorphous perversity of Mesdames Brooks and Madonna; the comic brilliance of Weezy Jefferson; and an uncanny ability to work a headscarf and heavy eyeliner that would put even La Nevelson to shame.
I suppose I had all those great ladies and their myriad gifts in mind when I dubbed my beguiling little scamp Louise.
She was a great beauty to be sure, and she maintained her elegant and imperious mien for the whole of our sixteen years together – without recourse to botox or pilates or any of the chimerical potions touted by Park Avenue dermatologists.
In matters of taste, her judgement was unimpeachable. I remember once bringing home a prototype of a cast crystal goblet fashioned by one of the most heralded designers of our time. No sooner had I placed the offending object on my coffee table than Louise blithely swatted it to the floor, smashing the crystal into a thousand shards. She was right, of course. The goblet was pretentiously artistic and clumsy, and Louise understood that pedigree alone did not merit a place at our table.
When circumstances dictated, she could be hard as nails. Louise defied cancer, the heroin chic craze of the mid-1990s, and years of degrading comparisons to lowbrow bitches like Spuds McKenzie. She was also a fearless ally in my lifelong struggle against neurasthenia and the vapours. But mostly she was a loving and generous companion. J. R. Ackerley, the great British canine scribe, summed it up best when he described his muse, Queenie, as possessing ‘the art of life’. She greeted ‘each new day with the utmost eagerness and anticipation of pleasure’, he wrote. ‘That is how life should be lived, this adventure of life; she provides me with that lesson.’
Mayer Rus
34
Louise and Mayer Rus, 2005 Graphite and watercolour, 40 x 60 inches
Lester and Devage
As the idea of drawing people and their dogs was developing, I began casting around for new subjects. My friend John Fanning, Maître d’ at Beppe, a fantastic but now sadly missed restaurant, suggested one of his waiters, Lester Garcia. Lester, he said, had a beautiful dog, a principessa named Devage.
Lester came to sit for me and brought the beautiful Devage – Hebrew, he said, for honey. Dvash is actually Hebrew for honey I later learnt. I asked him how he came to have such an unusual breed, a Cirneco dell’Etna.
He said that he’d always wanted a dog but had waited until he had a settled place and job and he then felt the time had come.
Lester spoke to a friend of his and asked if she would mind being a co-parent as his work often entailed long hours. She too had wanted a dog, so it was a perfect
arrangement. They’re stylish young people (Lester doesn’t even have lenses in his glasses), so they didn’t want just any pooch or mutt, they wanted an Italian Greyhound. They ultimately found that they couldn’t afford one, so the plan was put on hold until their circumstances improved.
A few weeks later, Lester was out walking in SoHo. It was a crisp, cool day with a perfect blue sky. As he turned the corner of Mercer and Prince Streets he happened upon a woman whose dog was loosely tethered to a fire hydrant. Both the woman and the dog were beautiful, and both had lovely honey-coloured hair (or fur on the dog). The dog jumped up affectionately at Lester, licking his hands, but the woman, who was on her cellphone, was sobbing – crying almost uncontrollably.
Lester remained stroking the dog and waited until the woman had finished her call. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked her, ‘Can I do anything to help?’ ‘Well, you and my dog seemed to have formed a friendship: you could take her.’
Sensing that the woman was in no state to make such a decision, he said he couldn’t possibly. Why did she want him to? She replied that she’d just arrived from Israel, and was going through a horrible divorce: ‘I’m in an apartment that does not allow dogs.’ ‘Let’s have a coffee and talk about it,’ said Lester. ‘I can’t,’ she replied. ‘I have to go.’
‘Well, give me your phone number and take mine. I’ll look after her until you find somewhere that is dog-friendly.’ They exchanged details while the bemused dog looked at one and then the other. ‘What’s her name?’ asked Lester.
‘Devage,’ said the woman. ‘Honey in Hebrew.’
A few months later Lester had a call from the woman, who said she was now in another apartment and more settled but that it didn’t take animals either so the dog was his. And that is how Lester met his principessa.
72
Lester Garcia and Devage, 2008 Graphite and watercolour, 40 x 60 inches
This page
Rocco on Velvet, 2009
Watercolour and graphite, 22½ x 21½ inches
Opposite
Rocco, 2004
Graphite and watercolour, 22½ x 30 inches
82
Above, left
Postcard, 2012
Graphite and watercolour, 6 x 4 inches
Above, centre
Postcard, 2012
Graphite and watercolour, 6 x 4 inches
Above, right
Postcard, 2014
Graphite and watercolour, 6 x 4 inches
Below, far left
Postcard, 2013
Graphite and watercolour, 6 x 4 inches
Below, left
Postcard, 2010
Graphite and watercolour, 6 x 4 inches
120
Watercolour, 5½ x 5½ inches
Watercolour, 5½ x 5½ inches
121
Left Sketchbook, August 2013
Above Sketchbook, 2013
We Think the World of You: People and Dogs Drawn Together
David Remfry
Royal Academy of Arts
Editor’s Note
Dimensions of all works of art are given in inches, height before width. All texts are by the artist unless otherwise stated.
Page 1: Sketchbook, 2013 (detail). Watercolour and graphite, 5½ x 5½ inches
Page 3: Geoffrey Firth and Rocco, 2009 (detail). Watercolour and graphite, 27 x 60 inches
Page 4: Honey, 2009. Graphite and watercolour, 22½ x 30 inches
Photographic Acknowledgements
Marcus J. Leith, London Christopher Burke Studio, New York Prudence Cumming Associates Limited, London
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank J. R. Ackerley, for the title of his wonderful book; Margaret Lipworth-Becker and the late Frank Becker, for their generous help towards this publication; all the sitters, for their generosity with their time and for their revealing stories; and, mostly, Caroline, without whose tireless work this book would have remained an idea. David
www.davidremfry.com
Remfry
Images copyright © 2015 David Remfry mbe ra
Texts copyright © 2015 The authors
Copyright © 2015 Royal Academy of Arts, London
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All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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ISBN 978-1-912520-98-5
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