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| Jean-Baptiste Greuze The Inconsolable Widow ca. 1762-63 oil on canvas Wallace Collection, London |
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| Angelica Kauffmann Thomas Jenkins and his niece Anna Maria Jenkins in Rome 1790 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié The Reading Lesson ca. 1774-79 oil on panel Wallace Collection, London |
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| Francisco Goya Portrait of Don Francisco de Saavedra 1798 oil on canvas Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| Jean-Honoré Fragonard Psyche showing her Sisters her Gifts from Cupid 1753 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Louis-Léopold Boilly Woman playing a Guitar with a Songbird on her Hand ca. 1785 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Johan Zoffany Portrait of David Garrick 1762-63 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Alexis Grimou Spanish Minstrel before 1733 oil on canvas National Trust, Petworth House, Sussex |
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| Benjamin West Family Group ca. 1776 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Jean-Laurent Mosnier Margaret Callander and her Son, James Kearney 1795 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
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| Henry Fuseli The Return of Milton's Wife ca. 1798-99 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Miss Elizabeth Haverfield ca. 1780-85 oil on canvas Wallace Collection, London |
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| Jacobus Buys The Betrothal 1774 oil on panel National Trust, Tatton Park, Cheshire |
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| Henry Tresham Death of Virginia 1797 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Alexander Runciman Death of Dido 1778 oil on canvas Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
Dogs Who Are Poets and Movie Stars
As I walk up Sixth Avenue, I pass a dog being dragged
down Eighth Street by its impatient owner,
and the dog is looking over its shoulder belligerently
at something on the other side of Sixth, so I, too, look
when I reach the intersection, and I expect to see another dog,
of course, but there's no one there except a woman
with big boobs, so I ask myself, is the dog really a man
who's been turned into a dog for staring too often and too long
at comely women? The ancient Greeks made rather a specialty
of this sort of thing, didn't they, of seeing to it that chaps
who didn't behave themselves went through some sort
of metamorphic comeuppance? Do not the wolves
and lions on Circe's island frighten Odysseus's men
by jumping up on them and wagging their tails
because they are rogues turned into animals
by the enchantress? I bet the Eighth Street dog
had been a movie star, because everything I read
about movie stars suggests they can't control themselves
for more than five minutes. Julianne Moore lives
on Eleventh, and John, who lives on Twelfth,
says that if I will take his cairn terrier Henry
for a walk and we run into Ms. Moore, I can talk to her:
she won't stop for me, but she'll stop to talk to Henry,
and then I can talk to her. But whether or not I run into
Ms. Moore, I would certainly have to clean up after Henry
when he does his business in order to be in compliance
with city sanitation code, and I'd rather miss out on
a conversation with Ms. Moore than clean up after Henry.
Whenever I think of Julianne Moore, I want to call her
Marianne Moore, of whom I've thought many times
more than I have of Julianne. Would I run the risk
of having to clean up after Henry to meet Marianne Moore?
Almost certainly, since she's dead, ha ha! Sometimes I read
the dog biographies from the pet adoption page of the paper
and think how pleasant it would be to own Shadow,
say, a "3½ year-old neutered purebred, Llewelyn setter,
housebroken," though I'd probably re-name him
Llewelyn. Or maybe Rebel, a "3 year-old male, short black
and tan coat, good with cats and children," but not Josie,
a "2½ year-old spayed purebred basset hound, no cats
or small children"! My mother's name was Josie.
But a dog who doesn't like cats or children is not a dog
you'd want to own, even though taking a nip out
of Tabby's hindquarters or Josh or Kimberly's chubby
little leg is very much au naturel for your dog, very much
the very essence of dogginess, you might say. Not that
there aren't good dogs out there: Harry and George,
for example, two therapy dogs who work in
the school system, good boys who put their heads
on their paws and listen to stories read by children
who don't read well, who are mocked by other kids
when they get a word wrong or turn their Rs into Ws,
yet Harry and George say nothing when the kids say
"how" instead of "who" or stutter or stumble over a word
they've never seen before. I'm going to treat each dog
as though he or she is a dead celebrity, is Errol Flynn
or Carole Lombard or W.H. Auden or Marilyn Monroe,
a dead actor or poet. I myself think it would be
excellent to be a celebrity some day, and if I am one,
then I should expect to be a dog later. And then
perhaps a celebrity again: who knows when this sort
of thing is going to run its course? Circe drugs
Odysseus's men and turns them into pigs
with "pigs' heads and grunts and bristles, pigs all over
except that their minds were the same as before,"
yet when they are changed back, they are "younger
than they were before, and handsomer and taller."
On the corner of Bleecker Street I do see a celebrity,
and one that is a very great pleasure to see, too,
so far is he out of his element: it is Gérard Depardieu.
– David Kirby (2005)