Palace House: The Good Companions

Newmarket’s Palace House celebrates Man’s Best Friend

A new exhibition opening at Newmarket’s Palace House this summer is heaven sent for dog lovers.

Opening on July 7th and running until November 1st, The Good Companions: The Many Roles of our Canine Friends is a compelling and engaging exploration of our relationship with dogs down the centuries.

Featuring paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, books and objects, even taxidermy of four-legged friends, The Good Companions – like the subjects themselves – is packed with pawsonality.

Among the works on display, are pieces by such luminaries as George Stubbs, William Hogarth, Edwin Landseer, Dame Elisabeth Frink and Sir Alfred Munnings, with depictions of dogs ranging from cheerful mongrels and sleek greyhounds to determined terriers.

Each of the 30-plus works were specially chosen by curator Katherine Field, as they tell extraordinary

Lieut RW Sutherland, Cavalry Officer, 1916, by Sir Alfred Munnings, copyright the estate of Sir Alfred Munnings

stories about individual dogs. The earliest pieces in the exhibition are A Gentleman with a Dog in a Wood (c.1746, Gainsborough’s House) by Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth’s wonderful selfportrait with his pet, Painter and his Pug (1746, Private Collection). Elisabeth Frink’s delightful, cast bronze sculpture of a seated terrier, Childhood (1992, Private Collection), is one of the last artworks she made before her death in 1993. The Good Companions follows a series of distinct themes: Dogs as Companions, Dogs as Heroes and

Sporting Dogs.

In the former, visitors will see representations of artists own dogs such as Hogarth’s pug, Trump, along with Philip de László’s Chinky and Sir Alfred Munnings’ Black Knight, both Pekingese. Mrs Philip de Laszlo and her pet Pekingese (1928), Philip de Laszlo, Courtesy of the de Laszlo Archive © The Philip Trust

The Heroes section takes visitors through a display of dogs working to help save lives during times of conflict.

Of course, no exhibition at the National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art would be complete without a section devoted to sporting dogs. From merry spaniels in Francis Hayman’s Thomas Nuthall and his Friend Hambleton Custance (c.1748, Tate, on display at Palace House) and George Stubb’s finely observed A Spaniel, with its nose characteristically sniffing the ground and a pointer pointing (both British Sporting Art Trust, c.1772), to hounds hunting (in a series of Robert Bevan lithographs called Hunting Scenes, p.1898, Great Britain). The Good Companions reveals the unique bond between humans and canines; both as workers in the field, family members in the home and ultimately, our very best of friends. ‘Water Dogs’ William Ward, Courtesy of ©BSAT

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