Portrait of Two King Charles Spaniels, Oil on Panel, French School, 18th Century, Ebonized Frame

Four eyes hold the viewer at once. Each one carries a single point of white at the top of the iris and an amber ring around the pupil, and the two dogs look out of a dark ground as if the painter had called them and they had turned together.

Oil on wood panel, 9 x 10 1/4 inches (23 x 26 cm), 16 x 17 1/3 inches (41 x 44 cm) framed, unsigned, French, eighteenth century, in an ebonized frame with a gilt inner slip.

Two King Charles spaniels, brown and white, one lying at the left with its forepaws crossed and one seated upright at the right. Behind them the ground falls away to a band of yellow-green hills laid in with a loaded brush, touched with orange along the crest, under a dark green sky. The white of the chests is built up in grey, cream and beige with dry touches drawn over the top in the direction the coat grows, and the small pink nose of the lying dog is set down in a single stroke.

The original panel is quartersawn and close-grained, with an old worm hole at the edge. It has been laid down on a later board at the back, which is what holds it flat and stable today.

The frame is a deep ebonized moulding with a reverse ogee profile and a gilt slip at the sight edge, in the manner of a Northern cabinet frame, of recent manufacture.

The paint carries an open age craquelure across the whole surface with some lifting, three old splits, and losses along the right edge and in the background.