portrait of a dachshound in an antics collector's interior

	French		Espanol

The Pet_Portraitist

"A Antics collector's Dachshound"

The Naughty dog --.>

In spring 1998, I drawed a portrait of a dachshound which had a great succes (you can see its story and enlarged image in the drawings gallery). As it was exhibited in the Paris Coutry-show, a very elegant american couple came on my stand. Monsieur was very fond of this dachshound portrait but in the same time, Madame was crazy of the pencil portrait of a lady.

Madame tried to tell Monsieur that I should draw a portrait of her.
But Monsieur was just interested to commission me a portrait of his pet dog.
So Madame tryed to change his mind, saying that I should paint a portrait of her with the dachshound in her arm.
Monsieur did not even hear her.

The scene was really amusing.

As the dachshound seemed very young, I suggested to wait a year for his portrait. Thirteen monthes later, I arrived in their wonderful flat on Boulevard Saint Germain (in Paris) to take photos of the teckel. This flat was like the Ali Baba's cavern, full of treasures from all over the world: Imari's porcelaines and chinas, tanagras statues, silver candlesticks on the furnitures but also on the floor everywhere... They had bought a huge castle in Georgia and were stocking all the furnitures in Paris.
I took a few photos of the young dachshound and came back home. In my workshop, thinking of this extra-ordinary flat, I had an idea. "I should paint the dog among these treasures". To explain my aim, I sketched the painting on a post-it note and call my client on the phone to take a new appointment. He loved the idea... Three monthes later, my portrait was finished. My photographer took photos of the painting and I sent one of them to my client.

But as I was looking at the photo, I found that this painting was too smooth and did not look like my usual work. So I came back to my workshop and spent 6 more days to engrave the golden bronze of the candlestick, sharpen the shadows and give more contrast to the whole painting.
When my client saw the real picture a month later, he claimed in french with his delicious american accent:
"Oh! but it is 100 times more beautiful than on the photo !"
You can imagine how happy I was.
It is so easy to give pleasure ! These words paid me for that 5 days.
This is the photo before these 5 days...
I don't have any photo of the finished painting.
Too bad, isnot it ?

Follow the guide to see the naughty dog