Britain's founding father of narrative satire was obsessed with a pug called Trump

William Hogarth was a serial dog painter. Look in the corners of his 'A Harlot’s Progress’ (1732) or ‘Marriage à la Mode’ (1743–45) series and there they are, silent witnesses to the moral decay of the human subjects.

His own favoured breed was the pug and, in 1745, he immortalised his favourite in The Painter and his Pug (below) — in which the dog is the real subject. Hogarth shows himself in the guise of a painted portrait in the background, drolly suggesting that the animal had painted the man.

Pugs were known as Dutch mastiffs and the one in the painting was called Trump, possibly an anglicisation of ‘Tromp’, the name of two famous Dutch admirals. In 1742, Hogarth’s sculptor friend Louis-François Roubiliac made a statuette of Trump, which was later copied by the Chelsea Porcelain Factory; it sold very well.

In his later life, the painter, then living in Chiswick, would habitually drop by a local pub in the evening. If he stayed too long and supper at home was in danger of spoiling, Trump would be sent to fetch him and the publican would let Hogarth know: ‘Your servant is come for you, sir.’

When Trump died, Hogarth had him stuffed and kept him on his chimneypiece, and in 2001, a statue of the artist with his four-legged friend, made by Jim Mathieson, was unveiled by Ian Hislop and David Hockney on the Chiswick High Road, close to Hogarth's House, the artist's residence from 1749 until his death in 1764.