Sat, 04/02/2022 - 12:15am

Pugs Might Fly

With apologies to Hieronymus Bosch

When he was a young teenager, Orlando Jacques saw a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter born in 1450, and in his lifetime his work was collected all across Europe. He is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity’s desires and deepest fears. His art mainly contains fantastic illustration of religious concepts and narratives. The ordinary are placed in a world alien to them so they cease to be ordinary.

One of his more famous works is the triptych “Garden of Earthy Delights,” which has been interpreted as a heretical masterpiece, an opulent illustration of the Creation and a premonition of the end of the world. Small naked humans share their world with giant brightly colored birds all set against the earth covered by a forest.

Jacques was born in 1975 and brought up in Barcelona, where he was familiar with Antoni Gaudi’s highly individual architecture. Born in 1852, Gaudi was known as the greatest exponent of Catalan Modernism. He considered every detail of his creations and integrated into his architecture such crafts as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork and carpentry; he even used waste ceramic pieces. His most famous creation is the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Orlando’s father wanted his only son to become an architect and enrolled him in the Barcelona School of Architecture. Orlando, who had always been interested in art, had other ideas and wanted to become a painter, so he left the School of Architecture before he had finished his studies.

Dogs had always been a part of his life while growing up. There were usually three or four about the house, and Orlando would often make sketches of them, so concentrating his art on dogs seemed for him to be a natural progression.

Pugs had always appealed to him; he liked their character and their air of self-importance when they moved. He was also fascinated by their history. 

The breed became the insignia of the excommunicated Catholic Freemasons in what is now Germany who had fallen out of favor with Pope Clement XII, a member of the all-powerful Medici family. Pugs also became associated with the House of Nassau-Orange in the Netherlands and came to symbolize Protestant Holland at a turbulent religious time in the country’s history. The breed was also a major player in one of the great love stories of the 20th Century, that of American socialite and divorcee Wallis Simpson and Edward, Prince of Wales, who gave up the throne to marry Wallis.

Much of Orlando’s work in a less dramatic way shows the influence of the work of Bosch inasmuch as he places familiar objects against a background that makes them no longer familiar. In “Pugs Might Fly,” a small child sits astride a fawn Pug on the beach, two Pugs’ masks float above the waves, while a winged Pug flies through the air.

With the interest today in interior design and with dogs playing a not inconsiderable part, Orlando is poised to become one of the next big names in the contemporary art world. A major exhibition is planned for his work at a gallery in the fall.

“Pugs Might Fly” is available from www.setupfineartgallery.com at $65,000 but only on April 1.

 

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY!

 

 Acknowledgments: Baroness Willoughby de Eresby and Enrico d’Assia

 

 

 

© Dog News. This article may not be reposted, reprinted, rewritten, excerpted or otherwise duplicated in any medium without the express written permission of the publisher.

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