Vintage Animal Art

These vintage animal prints range from Carl Reichert's dog portraits to Franz Marc's brightly colored animals. You will also find horses, grazing cows, a heron and 18th-century butterfly plates. Each print is made to order as fine art paper, gallery-wrapped canvas, or framed canvas.

Vintage animal prints and paintings

This collection gathers vintage animal prints from about 1780 to 1941: dogs, horses, cows, deer, birds and butterflies. Every painting is in the public domain, and every print is made to order.

Dog portraits by Carl Reichert

Carl Reichert (1836–1918) was an Austrian painter known above all for his dog portraits. He painted each dog as an individual, with close attention to coat, eyes and pose. The collection has his Newfoundland, a St. Bernard, two Great Danes, a young pug, and a group portrait called A motley crew.

Franz Marc and the Blue Rider

Franz Marc (1880–1916) was above all a painter of animals. In 1911 he and Wassily Kandinsky founded the Blue Rider in Munich. Marc gave colors meaning: blue for the spiritual, yellow for gentleness, red for matter. He was killed at Verdun in 1916.

His Dog Lying in the Snow (ca. 1911) shows a white dog resting in snow. His Red and blue horse (1912) and Deer in the Forest II (1912) set animals in strong, unnatural color. Kandinsky's horse-and-rider designs for the Blue Rider almanac are here too. See Wassily Kandinsky Prints.

Alexej von Jawlensky's Blaues Pferd (1915) and Mainie Jellett's cubist Achill Horses (1941) take the horse toward abstraction. See Alexej von Jawlensky Prints.

Horses, cows, birds and butterflies

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) painted a horse's head in close profile. Eugen Jettel painted cows grazing in Austrian and Dutch meadows, many of them also as panoramic prints. Edward Mitchell Bannister's Driving Home the Cows (1881) shows a herder bringing cows home. Karl Hagemeister painted a gray heron taking flight over the Havel river.

Pieter Cramer's plates of foreign butterflies from Asia, Africa and America were published between 1779 and 1782. Each plate shows several species on a white page.

Works to start with

Sizes and frames

Standard prints run from 8 × 12 to 28 × 42 inches, or from 11 × 14 to 30 × 40 inches. The range depends on the shape of the work. Each product page shows the current price for every size and format. Frames come in black, white, gold, silver, walnut and oak. Panoramic prints come in 8 × 24 to 20 × 60 inches. Panoramic framed canvas comes in black, walnut or oak.

Where animal prints fit in a home

Dog portraits suit a study, hallway or family room, and make a good gift for a dog owner. Franz Marc's color works suit a modern living room or a child's room. Pastoral cow scenes fit a kitchen or a farmhouse-style room. Butterfly plates work well in a set of three.

Reichert's dogs also appear in Vintage Portrait Paintings. The cows and meadows sit with Vintage Landscape Paintings, and the long versions with Panoramic Landscape Wall Art.

Frequently asked questions

Who is a famous painter who painted dogs?

Edwin Landseer in Britain is among the best known. Carl Reichert in Austria also specialized in dog portraits, and his work is in this collection.

What is the most famous dog painting?

Often-named examples include Francisco Goya's The Dog and Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's dogs playing poker. Neither is in this collection.

Are the butterflies real specimens?

No. They are prints of hand-colored book plates published from 1779 to 1782.

Should I choose paper or canvas?

Choose fine art paper if you want to frame the print yourself. It is 340gsm, 100% cotton rag, and ships rolled in a tube. Choose canvas if you want to hang it the day it arrives.

How do I hang a canvas print?

Canvas is stretched on solid wood bars. Framed canvas arrives with a hanging wire. Unframed gallery-wrapped canvas has a sawtooth hanger on the back.