Untitled Canine by Ernest Thompson Seton. Highlights of the Academy for the Love of Learning collection of Seton Drawings and Paintings/All image rights reserved.
ALL #3013 Ink wash on paper. 24 x 20.2 cm. Date notation: January 1895. Place notation: France.
Imagine yourself as Curator, describing the drawing above: Seated canine, front view. Tape on back. Mat burn. Water spot, bottom right. Written notes on verso regarding location of where it was created. Condition: stable (in its current state in storage, no further short-term damage is likely to occur.) Given 3013’s 131-year-old age, it is in reasonable shape. I keep it in dark storage sandwiched between layers of acid-free paper.
By contrast, a designation of “unstable” on other works means that damage may occur with the gentlest handling, or that the work may continue falling apart even in secure storage. This is especially true for works on paper that our literally crumbling or experiencing active flaking where bits of pigment are separating from its paper substrate. At some point, since this fine drawing is in relatively good shape, we may take it to a paper conservator for treatment to make sure it continues with us into the future.
Find My Dog
This image looked familiar to me, but where had I seen it? Seton wrote and illustrated lots of dog, wolf, fox, and coyote stories. Among the most notable canine characters, Lobo, Bingo, Springfield fox, and Wully in Wild Animals I Have Known. Chink and Tito in Lives of the Hunted. Badlands Billy, Snap, and the Winnipeg Wolf in Animal Heroes. Billy in Wild Animal Ways. Domino in The Biography of a Silver Fox.
Being a thorough researcher, I looked through all these stories to find if perhaps this image, ALL # 3013 might reside somewhere in the pages.
Santana, The Hero Dog of France
I kept looking until reaching deeper into my bookshelf and coming upon Seton’s final book.
During World War II, finding extra paper and ink for book printing could be a difficult task. Seton had one last story ready to go, a war tale from that earlier conflict, World War I. Seton overcame the resource problem through the good graces of his friend, the philosopher Manly P. Hall.
In 1945, Hall published Seton’s Santana, The Hero Dog of France under the imprint, “The Phoenix Press, Los Angeles.” (Hall liked the image of the Phoenix in part due to his interest in reincarnation.)
Santana is a 61-page short story published in between the red covers of this rare volume. And there, on page 34, is a simplified line drawing which is in some way a descendant of ALL #3013. The dog in this drawing is named Fauvette. She the mother of our future hero, Santana. The similarity between the two drawings is striking, but not conclusive without documentary support.
Two Dogs Compared
Fauvette’s portrait is not currently available for reproduction, so try to image this:
The body position is the same in each drawing, although in the later drawing, figure is reversed, with hips and tail now pointing right rather than left as in the original from fifty years earlier. Fauvette’s elongated face is a bit more wolf-like. But both figures can be seen as demonstrating the features of a “collie-dog.” There is another difference to contemplate: The untitled work from 1885 is much more complete than the line drawing published in 1945.
Is Fauvette a direct descendant of the 1895 drawing? (It is possible.) Or did Seton hold a general image of “dog” that re-emerges from his artistic memory? Seton would have had the 1885 drawing to look at should he have needed a model. It is certain that Seton was giving much thought to the subject of dogs. Just prior to the Santana story he was researching a never-completed non-fiction book about military dogs. The Santana book came out instead.
I won’t give away the story but will hint that Santana gives his all to save French soldiers.