Pomeranian portraits in 18th Century Royalty

The spitz that royals made small

The Pomeranian is the smallest of the spitz breeds, a toy relation of the Arctic sled dogs. It takes its name from Pomerania, a Baltic region now split between Poland and Germany, where its ancestors were bred down from much bigger spitz dogs. The breed standard asks for a compact, short-backed dog of three to seven pounds, with a fox-like expression, small ears carried erect, and a heavily plumed tail set high and lying flat on the back.

Painters and royals made the breed famous.Thomas Gainsborough painted Pomeranians in the 1770s and 1780s, larger dogs than today's but already with the heavy coat and the tail over the back; his Pomeranian Bitch and Puppy, from about 1777, is in Tate's collection. A century later Queen Victoria bred and showed the breed, entering six of her own dogs at Crufts in 1891, and she is credited with bringing it down from about thirty pounds to its toy size.

AKC sums up the temperament as inquisitive, lively and bold: a few pounds of dog with a commanding, big-dog manner, alert enough to make a keen watchdog. The double coat is the breed's signature, a dense undercoat under long, harsh guard hair that stands off the body and forms a ruff around the neck. It comes in almost two dozen colors and many patterns, all judged equally under the standard, though orange and red are the colors seen most.

A Pomeranian at court

18th Century Royalty paints the pet as an old-master oil portrait. The dog sits on a velvet cushion edged in gold braid and tassels, a crimson cloak trimmed in ermine over its shoulders and a gold chain with a small jeweled pendant at its throat, against a dark, warm ground with a fall of drapery. The surface carries the fine crackle of an old varnished canvas.

Few breeds wear the costume as naturally as the Pomeranian. Its ruff, the frill the standard asks to frame the head and run over the shoulders and chest, rises straight out of the ermine collar, so the dog's own coat and the white fur meet at the throat. The fox-like face and the small upright ears sit high over the robe, which gives a dog of a few pounds the bearing of a sitter for a state portrait.

The style sets its own scene, whatever the photo: a Pom photographed on a garden path, a sofa or a bed of autumn leaves arrives on the cushion under the cloak. The cloak falls over the back, where the plumed tail lies. The coat color and the face come from the photo, and each holds its own against the crimson and gold: an orange Pom glows warm on the dark ground, a cream one reads pale and soft beside the ermine, and a chocolate one, brown nose and all, stands out against the white fur of the collar.

A portrait with the breed's own history

For a Pomeranian owner, a royal portrait is a nod to the breed's past, from the Pomeranians of eighteenth-century painters to Queen Victoria's kennels. A phone photo is enough to begin. The painting is there to see before anyone pays, and another photo or another style is free to try. One photo can hold more than one pet, so a household with two Poms can start from a single picture of both.