Tama, il cane giapponese

In the 1870s Paris had fallen for all things Japanese, and this little dog was that fashion made flesh. Its name was Tama, meaning jewel, a black and white Japanese spaniel brought back to the city by the banker Henri Cernuschi after a long journey through East Asia. Cernuschi returned with so much Asian art that he eventually turned it into a museum. Manet painted the dog for his friend the critic Theodore Duret, one of the first Frenchmen to champion both this new taste for Japan and Manet's own work. Beside Tama sits a Japanese doll, in case the point was missed. Renoir painted the very same dog too, and that version went to its owner while Manet's went to Duret.