We Think the World of You: People and Dogs Drawn Together

In an era when dogs are more likely to have Instagram accounts than appear in exhibitions by Royal Academicians, David Remfry (born 1942) has spent the past 15 years creating a series of portraits that reveal the personalities of and relationships between dogs and their owners, including actors Alan Cumming, Susan Sarandon and Ethan Hawke.

David Remfry is a contemporary British born painter. He is perhaps best known for his large-scale watercolours, often of people dancing, his landscapes of New York and his portraits of residents and friends painted and drawn during his twenty years living and working at the Hotel Chelsea, New York City. He has also curated several exhibitions and was recently a Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy Schools.

Over the past five decades his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; and the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida; DeLand Museum of Art, Florida. In 2014 he was commissioned by Fortnum & Mason, London, to create a series of watercolours which is now on permanent display in Piccadilly, and he was commissioned to paint Sir John Gielgud for the National Portrait Gallery, London, which also acquired for their collection his portrait of Jean Muir.

Remfry was elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1987. In 2001 he was awarded an MBE for services to British Art in America, in 2006 he was elected a Member of the Royal Academy of Arts and, in 2007, he was invited to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Arts by the University of Lincoln. He was awarded the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize at the 2010 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.