Many of the later portraits of Winston Churchill made him look more than a little like a pug.
When Thierry Poncelet paints a pug, the animal looks alarmingly like Churchill, perhaps because it is posing in a high collar, necktie and waistcoat.
Poncelet painstakingly restores gilt-framed 18th and 19th Century ancestral portraits, the kind of dour oil paintings usually found lining the staircases of England`s statelier homes, inside men`s clubs and, in America, in shops that cater to aspiring Windsors.
He then paints the face of a dog, or sometimes a cat, depending on his whim, over the original human face.
Restoration was his start
Poncelet, a Belgian who began his career as an art restorer, calls his subjects ”aristochiens” and ”aristochats.”
In fact, his animals-morosely dignified English setters; solemn, magisterial Great Danes; and snooty poodles in powdered wigs-are all too human and oddly suited to the Old World frock coats, black satin dresses and frilly lace caps they wear.
Poncelet blends pigments and brush strokes so carefully that it is impossible to separate the original portrait from the artist`s touches. They look uncannily like real ancestral portraits-but then again, so many people`s ancestors do look like dogs.
”If anyone described them to me, I`d say it was the worst idea I ever heard,” said Roger Caras, the new president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who until recently covered the animal world for ABC News. Caras is an art collector.
”It isn`t art, exactly,” he said, ”but it is a technical tour de force. There is nothing wrong with smiling at a painting; they don`t all have to be the `Guernica.` ”
The ASPCA recently auctioned off one of Poncelet`s aristiochiens at a fund-raising event.
His collection on display
Poncelet`s collection of 27 portraits is at the Stephanie Hoppen gallery in New York, an art and home-decoration shop that is cluttered with club chairs, tartan couches, leather-bound books and bibelots.
The gallery provides an unusually apt setting for Poncelet`s oeuvre.
”I try to keep it distinguished and discreet,” Poncelet said in a telephone interview from Brussels, where he lives. ”There is nothing shocking or aggressive in these paintings; they are almost poetic.”
He gave a self-deprecating cough, and said, ”I have noticed that the people who buy them are almost always in the first ranks of their fields-be it industry or the nobility-people who aren`t afraid to have a sense of humor.” In fact, it seems that Poncelet`s aristochiens are bought up eagerly by the aristopeople of Europe, and even royalty.
”Most of the crowned heads of Europe have bought them, and people with ancestral portraits of their own, who sprinkle the aristochiens in among them,” said Hoppen, who also sells Poncelet`s works in her gallery in London. Royalty, commoners agree
”The Marchioness of Tavistock has three, and she hangs them with her Gainsboroughs. It`s amazing, but these dogs are quite the chic, in-thing.”
They are also popular with commoners.
”They are absolutely hilarious, I think,” said Ken Straus, a retired department store executive, who owns five.
”The one I like most is a very, very elegant Labrador retriever, in white tie and a silk vest. Very much the gentleman.”
Straus admitted that he had had two Labrador retrievers as a child, one called Duke and the other, Binky.
Poncelet discovered his muse four years ago, when he was restoring a portrait of a lady. Bored by her ”insignificant” face, he painted in a cat instead.
”I like the backgrounds, the costumes, the atmosphere of old portraits, but the faces don`t interest me,” he said. ”And since I am very fond of dogs, this combined my two loves.”
He combs flea markets, antiques shops and private homes for portraits to restore, then matches dog to subject: A German short-haired pointer, his muzzle turned upward haughtily, looks the part of a French officer at the battle of Alma in a blue dress uniform with gold epaulettes, sword and an array of medals.
Doggy immortalized
Some portraits come with family crests; Poncelet discreetly paints out the telltale insignia, and sometimes substitutes tiny dog bones. Before it died, Poncelet also immortalized his red cocker spaniel, Doggy, painting his long nose and softly curling ears onto several portraits of stolid 19th Century matrons, who now are forever condemned to anonymity.
”There are people who hate me: They think it is a sacrilege to desecrate ancestors,” he said cheerfully. ”I think dogs deserve to put us in our place.”
Poncelet, who said he prefers dogs to cats, considers his work an homage to the canine kingdom.
”Dogs have earned all this,” he said. ”Dogs never disappoint you; they appreciate you even if you are ugly and stupid.” And, in Poncelet`s case, their virtue has other rewards: His portraits sell for $5,000 to $8,000.
Diane Kelder, a professor of art history at the City University of New York, noted that anthropomorphic art is not new. She cited examples in the etchings of Goya, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch as well as the works of many 18th and 19th Century graphic artists and satirists.
Not pessimistic but playful
”Usually, the blurring of animal and human features is linked to a terrible pessimism about human nature and the evils of the world,” she said. ”Mr. Poncelet`s paintings are whimsical, but his intent is not satirical or profound-it`s playful and quite delightful.”
Not everyone was quite as delighted.
”It is amusing, but I don`t know how legitimate it is,” said Mimi Vang Olsen, a ”pet portrait painter” who has immortalized clients` cats and dogs in more than 200 paintings in her studio-gallery in Manhattan.
”If it is a wonderful portrait of a 17th Century Brussels burgher in a collar and big hat, and an artist paints in a monkey face, how seriously can you take it?”
She added thoughtfully, ”Still, I guess Andy Warhol taught us that almost everything deserves to be called art.” –
