Bulldog portraits on the long ride, jowls in the wind

From the bull ring to the back seat

The AKC traces the Bulldog to 13th-century England, where it was bred for bullbaiting. When England banned blood sports with animals in 1835, the breed lost its job and nearly died out. Its admirers spent the rest of the century turning a brawler into a companion, and the AKC recognized the breed in 1886.

The standard asks for a heavy, thick-set, low-swung body and a massive, short-faced head: a skull as large around as the dog is tall at the shoulder, an undershot jaw with the lower jaw well ahead of the upper, thick hanging flews, heavy wrinkles over the face, and two loose folds of dewlap at the throat. The small, thin ears should be the rose ear, folded back to show part of the inside, and never carried erect.

Bulldogs come in red, white, fawn and fallow, alone or in any mix, with brindle, piebald, ticking, a black mask or black tipping. The temperament the standard asks for is equable and kind, resolute and courageous, pacific and dignified, and the AKC describes a mellow dog that will still try to curl up in a lap at 50 pounds.

The Long Ride, painted for a Bulldog

The Long Ride is one of our own styles: an oil painting of your dog riding in the back of a car through open country in late-afternoon light, head and front paws out of the open window. Little of the car shows, only the top of the door and the window frame in one deep color, and behind it the fields stream past as long, flat strokes of gold, green and sky blue.

On a Bulldog the wind has a lot to work with. The loose skin of the head and the hanging flews catch it, the rose ears flip back and show their pink insides, and the broad, square head fills the window frame. The short, wide-set front legs of the breed rest on the sill side by side, the way a real Bulldog leans out.

The brushwork is loose and visible, with the low sun picked out in thicker touches on the brow, the wrinkles and the chest. The face, the build and the markings stay your dog's own: a red brindle with a white blaze, a pale dog with one fawn eye patch, or a dark brindle with a white chest each keep their pattern in the painting.

A gift for a Bulldog's people

A Bulldog rarely asks for much: a seat in the car, a place on the couch, and to go wherever its people go. The Long Ride is a painting of that, and it suits a dog whose whole face is expression, from the furrowed brow to the underbite.

The breed is the mascot of Yale, of the University of Georgia and of the U.S. Marine Corps, so the painting also suits a graduate or a Marine who shares a home with one. For a Bulldog that has died, it keeps the dog riding along.