David Hockney's Dog Days - Thames and Hudson

David Hockney presents his two dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie, in this magnificent collection. Results of keen observation and love, these paintings and drawings are lyrical studies in form and design, while the artist's text offers insight into working with models who don't necessarily want to sit still. Since September 1993, I have been painting and drawing my dogs. It required some planning because dogs generally aren't interested in art (I say generally only because I met a singing dog). Food and love dominate their lives. I'm not sorry for the apparent subject. These two dear little creatures are my friends. They are intelligent, loving, humorous, and often bored. They watch me work; I see warm shapes they create together, their sadness and pleasures. And being Hollywood dogs, they seem to know a photograph is being taken. - David Hockney.

The Thames & Hudson publishing house was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their greatest passion and mission was to create a “wall-less museum” and to make the world of art, as well as leading scientific research, accessible to the broad public. To reflect international perspectives, the company's name combined the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, the other west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New.

Today, still an independent, family-run publisher, Thames & Hudson is one of the world's leading publishers of illustrated books with over 2000 titles printed. It publishes high-quality collectible books across all areas of visual creativity: arts (fine arts, applied arts, decorative arts, performing arts), architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and music, as well as archaeology, history, and popular culture. It is also expanding its list of children's books. Headquartered in London with a sister company in New York and branches in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris, another subsidiary, Interart, distributes English-language books in France.

History of the Thames & Hudson brand

Walter Neurath was born in Vienna in 1903. In 1938, he left his hometown—where he ran an art gallery and published illustrated books—for London. Initially, he worked as a production director at Adprint, a brand founded by Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foge. Neurath and Foge developed an innovative concept of what is now called book packaging (or co-publishing), where book ideas are developed, ordered, produced, and sold to publishers operating in different markets and languages to create large editions and reduce unit production costs. Neurath’s concept was the first of many innovations introduced to the publishing world through Thames & Hudson.

Eager to continue packaging collectible books in a second edition and recognizing the need to amortize the high costs of producing illustrated books, Neurath founded his own publishing company, with offices in London and New York, in the fall of 1949. Eva Neurath, who arrived in London from Berlin in 1939, was a co-founder.

Of the ten titles published on Thames & Hudson’s first list in 1950, *English Cathedrals*, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann, was the first and most successful. It demonstrated the company's strong belief from the outset in the longevity of books, remaining in print until 1971. Also in the first year of publication was *Out of My Later Years* by Albert Einstein, an early indicator of the program’s breadth. As the list gradually expanded from ten titles in 1950 to 144 in 1955, the company moved its offices to High Holborn and in 1956 relocated to a Georgian townhouse at 30 Bloomsbury Street, near Bedford Square, then the epicenter of book publishing in London. The publisher remained at this address, eventually expanding to five houses, until 1999, when it returned to High Holborn.