This is Sympathy, painted by the British artist Briton Rivière and shown at the Royal Academy in London in 1878. A little girl has been sent away in disgrace for some bit of mischief, and now she sits alone at the top of the stairs, refusing to look at anyone. Everyone else has left her to think about what she’s done, everyone except her dog, who has climbed up beside her, pressed himself against her, and is looking up at her face, waiting for her to forgive the world. The model for the girl was Rivière’s own daughter, Millicent, and the scene must have felt familiar to every family who saw it. It became the most praised work of his career, and the demand for copies was so great that Rivière painted several versions of it himself. Even John Ruskin, the most feared critic of the age, wrote that it had been a long time since anything at the Royal Academy had pleased him so much. Rivière was known as one of the finest animal painters of his time, and his biographer explained why: what interested him most was the animal’s real self. And this little dog shows what every dog knows instinctively: it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, or who’s angry with you, when you’re at your lowest, he isn’t there to judge you. He’s just there, by your side...