4: Hogarth's Self-Portrait with Pug
William Hogarth
Portrait of the Painter and His Pug, 1745
Oil on canvas, w69.9 cm x h90 cm (27.5" x 35.4")
Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom
One of those visual-jokery, self-portrait-within-a-portrait, "what is real" deals that artists like to do. Here, it is believed that Hogarth's pug (that's an old-timey pug, before we smashed in their faces!) is used as a playful stand-in for the artist's own "pugnacious" personality, and the dog also helps achieve the intentional undercutting of formality (the books of Shakespeare, Swift and Milton, the inscribed palette, the elegant draped cloth) with informality (note the dog's tongue out, its ears rolled up, and its lack of interest in the painting stuff, plus Hogarth's wardrobe in his 'portrait' and the cloth continued out of the frame into the 'real' world of the painting) that this piece has going on.
To elaborate slightly: whenever an artist does a self-portrait, they're telling you what they think their work is 'about' in some way, and Hogarth's decision to include his dog (especially his dog in this attitude) tells us a lot about him as a painter. Specifically, this painting suggests that his professional ambitions were real, his interest in realism and high artistic standards completely serious — but that wasn't going to stop an equally real willingness to make and take a joke (particularly jokes based in attention in realism).
Which would line up pretty well, since Hogarth's reputation today is as a master of satire, parody and caricature, in addition to realism.