Miniature Oil on Panel of Pugs by Horatio Henry Couldery

Horatio Henry Couldery was a prolific and highly successful English painter of animals and animal genre scenes. He is most known for painting cats and kittens and dogs and pups in a playful anecdotal style; however, he also painted numerous kinds of animals in a straightforward portraitist manner. Couldery was born in 1832 in the Lewisham borough of London to the landscape painter Robert Hall Couldery and Lydia Frances Ruegg. In his youth, he was apprenticed to be a cabinetmaker, however, at the age of 23, he enrolled in the school of the Royal Academy of Arts in London to pursue a career as a painter. At the Royal Academy, he became a proficient painter of animals including fish, pheasants, rabbits, ducks, mice, dogs and cats in a highly finished detailed style. Couldery debuted at the Royal Academy in 1861 with two paintings of fish (Mackerel and Herrings) and 1862, at the Royal Society of British Artists with two more fish still-life paintings titled Fresh from Market and Smelts. The artist continued to exhibit at both venues almost continuously for the entirety of his career, exhibiting over 100 works during his lifetime. Beginning in 1870, Couldery started showing pictures of cats and kittens and dogs and pups with anecdotal titles like The Little Epicure, The Sleep of Innocence and Patience. He became well known for these pictures and in 1875, his painting A Fascinating Tail caught the attention of the famous art critic John Ruskin who wrote, “[it was] quite the most skillful piece of minute and Dureresque painting in the exhibition... unsurpassable.” Couldery exhibited widely throughout the United Kingdom, including important venues in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Dublin. He was a successful painter and highly regarded artist in his lifetime, and today, his work is considered a prime example of high-quality Victorian genre painting. The works are on display at the Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport; the Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery; England Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery and the Glenmore National Historic Site, Belleville, Canada.