Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “The Inn of Mother Anthony” (1866) by Renoir’s time, the Bichon had gone from the lap of the elite to the floor of the inn.Ĭircuses have always had a preference for white dogs, the gleaming coats making their form and facial expressions easy for customers in the cheap seats to see at a distance.

Trainable, impossibly cute, and always at their best when in the spotlight, Bichons were excellent candidates for showbiz success. It wasn’t long before the Bichon was earning his keep as a circus performer. Street entertainers took in the bright, agile dogs and trained them to turn somersaults, walk on their hind legs, waving both paws in the air, and perform other tricks calculated to coax a coin or two from passersby. Many were turned out into the street to fend for themselves. One by one the breed’s benefactors were trotted off to prison and the guillotine, and their Bichons lost their positions of privilege in townhouses and palaces. With the advent of the French Revolution in 1789, the Bichon’s days as the pampered pet of the aristocracy rudely came to an end. “Miss Beatrix Lister,” by Sir Joshua Reynolds, National Gallery of Art The Entertainer Some 250 years after Titian’s time, a Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait known as “Miss Beatrix Lister, Sister of the 1 st Lord Ribblesdale” (1765), shows that the Bichon was still sitting in the lap of luxury. A celebrated Renaissance painting by Titian depicts Federico Gonzaga, the duke of Mantua, with a wooly, cream-colored Bichon at his side. We know a lot about the Bichon’s career as a royal lap warmer thanks to the many appearances the breed makes in portraits by the great painting masters. Recognizing a trend, the court ladies adopted the same odd form of transport.” 1529), by Titian, Museo del Prado, MadridĮlaine Waldorf Gewirtz wrote in the AKC Gazette of how the Bichon’s irresistible charm could lead to some odd behavior among Europe’s crowned heads: “King Henry III of France (1574–1589) was so enamored of his Bichons that he carried a few whenever he went in a tray-like basket suspended by neck ribbons. Most notably, they endeared themselves to the royal courts of Spain, Italy, and France, and came into their own during the Renaissance. The breed’s close association with European nobles began sometime in the 13 th century. Quick, clever, and pleasing to the eye, the petite Bichon Tenerife dog became the primary ancestor of today’s Bichon Frise. One of these breeds became so closely associated with the island that it was known as the Bichon Tenerife. It is thought that these breeds began their modern development on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. More formally, members of this canine clan are known as Barbichon-type dogs, an umbrella term for such breeds as the Bolognese, Havanese, Maltese, and Bichon Frise. We do know that small lapdogs were bartered around the Mediterranean basin for millennia. Cleopatra, so the legend goes, was a “little white dog” fan. The informal grouping of what can only be called “little white dogs” has exerted a fascination among royals and aristocrats for so long that we can’t say for sure how it all got started. Bichons Frises have withstood world wars, revolutions, and the fall of empires by eagerly adapting to whatever challenge fate has sent their way. The adorable Bichon Frise is among the canine kingdom’s great survivors, relying on charm and intelligence to weather history’s ups and downs.

Canari frise