The dog has been a companion to humans for thousands of years. Jan Philipp Reemtsma's excursions into the "Dog in Painting" differentiate, in an educated and entertaining manner, the various roles they play in art. "Dogs as accessories that simply provide an optical or genre-specific relief to the painting - and dogs that appear strangely prominent in the image, without one being able to say at first glance what they are actually doing there." Thus, the spectrum ranges from Rembrandt to Max Liebermann, from Watteau to Lucian Freud. Forty color illustrations accompany the text. And the reader of the book will be on the lookout for dogs during their next museum visit.