696 The Dog Book 



the Metropolitan Museum, nor in any reproduction of such a painting that 

 we know of, shows a pug and it does seem as if some of the artists would have 

 introduced one had the breed been either common or fashionable. There 

 is no scarcity of dogs in these Dutch paintings. There is a Teniers, 

 somewhat similar to his own kitchen, previously illustrated, the spaniels 

 being more pronounced in type, and in two small Teniers there are also 

 large spaniels. David Rychaert, 1612-1661, shows a leggy spaniel in "The 

 Stowage." In Gillis Van Tilloigh's, 1625-1678, "Visit of a Landlord to a 

 Tenant" there is a beautifully modelled black and white greyhound. 

 Kaspar Netscher, 1639-1684 has a spaniel in two of his paintings, a very 

 pretty dark tan and white shown in a portrait of a lady, and a really exquisite 

 small, apple-headed orange and white toy spaniel in a small painting of a 

 card party. Rubens, 1577-1640, has a white spaniel with orange marked 

 head in the small painting of Susanah and the Elders. This is a somewhat 

 limited field to pronounce a decision upon, but it approaches nearly to 

 Hogarth's time and his painting of himself with his uncropped pug is very 

 well known. The pug may be Dutch, but we want more evidence than we 

 have yet seen to accept it as any more entitled to be considered exclu- 

 sively Dutch than English in its European introduction and fostering. 



From the earliest illustrations of the pug he has always been the same 

 dog that we have now, and is one of the few breeds which have shown no 

 change, other than improvement directly caused by breeding for improve- 

 ment and fancy. At the same time and almost as far back as we can dis- 

 tinguish between what the Chinese meant to be a dog and what was the dog 

 of Fo, we find the pug-headed, curled-tailed dog that was the progenitor of 

 the Pekinese dog. There is no getting away from the obvious, the very 

 plain indication that the pug was an oriental importation. 



Even if that was not the actual origin of the pug we owe a great deal 

 to the smooth Pekinese as nearly all our pugs trace back to one particular 

 cross of the dog from China. Of late years there has been more of this foreign 

 blood introduced than we think English breeders will admit to be the case, 

 particularly to help out in the production of black pugs. Prior to that, 

 however, all the English pugs of prominence from 1865 to 1895, also all our 

 best pugs from 1880 to 1900 trace to Click a dog of pure Chinese stock. 



Click belonged to Mrs. Laura Mayhew, of Twickenham, London, and 

 this lady was one of the leading pug exhibitors at the early dog shows of 

 England. Click is given in the stud book as "by Lamb (from Pekin) out 



