Anne Lenders, curator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, has more or less by chance discovered that the barking dog in Rembrandt's famous painting "Night Watch" is an almost identical copy of a dog that appears in an ink drawing from 1619 by the Dutch artist Adriaen van de Venne.
Lenders visited an exhibition at the Zeeuws Museum in southern Netherlands when her gaze fell on an image of a dog in a book by the poet Jacob Cats. The original drawing by van de Venne – which turned out to be part of the Rijksmuseum's own collection – was also on display.
I was not looking for this, it was really unexpected, but the resemblance is so strong that I immediately understood that he (Rembrandt) must have used this dog, she says in a specially designed glass chamber at the Rijksmuseum where "Night Watch" is undergoing a comprehensive restoration.
The head is turned at exactly the same angle with the mouth slightly open. Both dogs have long fur and ears that hang vertically, says Lenders.
