Newly Hot Commodity: Dog Art

Two sell for about $200K apiece
By Dustin Lushing,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 7, 2012 7:22 PM CST
Newly Hot Commodity: Dog Art
William Secord, president of William Secord Gallery in Manhattan, straightens a painting of his dog Rocky. It is the only gallery in the nation dedicated exclusively to dog art.   (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A painting of six pooches gazing at a bird has sold for a whopping $212,500, and it's apparently no fluke. The piece, entitled Hounds in a Kennel by William Hamilton Trood, was auctioned off at a special sale held every year right after the Westminster Dog Show, reports the AP. An hour earlier, another painting by the same artist—of dogs and cats eating from a big dish—sold for $194,500. (You can see them both here.)

"The dog art market is certainly turning a corner," says a rep from auctioneer Bonhams. The AP even finds someone "widely considered the world's foremost authority on 19th-century dog paintings," William Secord, who runs a dogs-only gallery in Manhattan. "We have had an increase in visitors over past years, but also a substantial increase in sales compared to this time last year," he says. The most expensive work of dog art ever? That would be a $3.6 million portrait of a Newfoundland, sold in 1999. (More dogs stories.)

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