Bulldog Print by Pollyanna Pickering

Pickering was one of Britain's best-known wildlife artists, and a bulldog drawn by someone whose eye was trained on wild animals comes out rather differently from the usual treatment. The breed is normally handled either as comedy or as patriotic furniture, and neither does much for the actual dog.

The Bulldog is a difficult shape to draw honestly. Everything about it is folds - the rope over the nose, the flews, the loose skin at the shoulder and throat - and those folds have to sit convincingly over a body that is genuinely broad and low rather than simply fat. Draw the wrinkles as lines and you get a crumpled cushion; draw them as shadow and you get a dog. The head is enormous relative to the body and the front is set wide, which looks like an error unless it is done with confidence.

The expression is the other half of it. Bulldogs are not fierce and have not been for well over a century, and the face at rest is patient and faintly put-upon. A drawing that goes for menace has misread the animal entirely.

Bulldogs also appear in the wider Dogs section, and Staffordshire Bull Terriers and Bull Terriers each have their own pages if you are after a different bull breed.

This is a giclee print on archival paper with fade-resistant inks, so nothing yellows over a decade on a wall. It is sized to fit a standard off-the-shelf frame and mount, and it has stayed in its wrapping since the day it was bought, never hung or displayed.