Provenance:

Private Collection, California.

Carl (sometimes spelled Karl) Reichert was the son of the painter Heinrich Reichert. He began his studies in Graz at the age of 14, entering the Ständische Zeichnungsakademie. In the 1850s, with his friend Josef Kuwasseg, he painted a series of watercolors documenting the castle of Graz for Archduchess Sophie of Austria, following which he embarked on landscape paintings of other landmarks in Styria. At one of these, Schloss Reinthal, the owner, Baron von Hügel, commissioned Reichert to paint portraits of his two pointers. Thus began the career for which the artist became celebrated, as a painter of animals.

Reichert was famously prolific, painting both genre subjects featuring dogs, cats, and horses, and portraits of the pets of the well-to-do. The present painting is an exceptional example of the latter. The sitter (not a setter) is clearly a pampered dog, as he calmly sits with a red bow in his hair. The landscape setting features an aloe plant at the left, a palm tree below in the valley, and mountains in the distance. Whether the setting references a tropical locale where the dog and his owner lived, or is a reference to the breed of the dog, is unclear. Changes in breed characteristics since the 19th century make it uncertain what kind of dog is represented—whether a Bichon Frisé, Havanese, Maltese, Poodle, or other.