Artists of the Church and Dwight Collection
Gustav Muss-Arnolt
Flux Art Conservation was lucky to get to restore a collection of paintings owned by Church & Dwight, Co., Inc. Although there were two different artists who painted the pieces in the collection that came to the studio - John Henry Hintermeister and Gustav Muss-Arnolt - the majority were by Muss-Arnolt; 26 of the 30 in total, with 21 being different breeds of dogs. Church & Dwight is known for its series of bird trading cards, but they also released series featuring other animals such as dogs, cows, and fish. Muss-Arnolt painted images of dogs for the two different dog-themed card series: the 1902 Champion Dog card series and the 1910 New Series of Dogs card series. Both card series had a total of 30 cards each, all painted by Muss-Arnolt. After researching and learning more about him over the course of this project, it became readily apparent as to why he was chosen as the artist to paint the images for the dog series cards.
According to most sources online, Gustav Muss-Arnolt emigrated from his birth country of Germany to the United States around 1890, but our research shows him living in New York City by 1880, eventually settling in Tuckahoe, New York. From the start, Muss-Arnolt was working in the art scene and soon after the dog-show scene. The first documented mention of Muss-Arnolt found through our research was in the catalogue for the National Academy of Design’s Fifty-fifth Annual Exhibition, held in 1880. He exhibited one painting in the exhibition, titled Waiting, which he was looking to sell for $500. He exhibited paintings in five more National Academy of Design annual exhibitions in 1881, 1885, 1886, 1887, and 1894. The titles of his paintings in the exhibitions do not always give away the subject matter of the paintings, but at least two most likely featured dogs: Hard Pressed Beagles Chasing a Rabbit and "Steady, Boys!” (Quail Shooting in North Carolina).
In the early 1890s, he wrote and illustrated articles for Harper’s Weekly on American dogs, bench shows, and kennels. He even drew a full-page illustration for Volume 35, Issue 1784 Harper’s Weekly, dated February 28, 1891. The illustration, called “Dogs of High Degree,” featured twelve dogs representing eleven different breeds. It accompanied an article of the same name by John Gilmer Speed. Muss-Arnolt was able to write and illustrate these articles due to his involvement with the American Kennel Club (AKC). We don’t have specifics on when he got involved with the AKC, but his name first appears in volume 5 of the AKC’s Stud Book in 1888 as the owner of an English setter named Sylvan and a pointer named Meally’s Baby. By 1895, he was drawing illustrations for the American Kennel Club Gazette. His illustrations were used for the covers of the “Events Calendar” supplements. Between 1895 and 1909, he had drawn over 200 illustrations for the magazine. Owning, and later breeding and showing, registered dogs and drawing pictures for the AKC wasn’t his only involvement with the organization. Muss-Arnolt was also a bench show judge starting in 1893. He judged for two shows that year, the Westminster Kennel Club Seventeenth Annual Bench Show and the Maryland Kennel Club Third Annual Bench Show. He even has a connection with Philadelphia, judging shows for the Philadelphia Dog Show Association, the Wissahickon Kennel Club, and the Bryn Mawr Kennel Club. In 1903, Muss-Arnolt is listed as a member of the AKC’s Constitution and Rules Standing Committee, and in 1906, he was a member of the AKC’s Board of Directors, serving a four-year term that ended in 1909.
On top of creating illustrations for magazines, Muss-Arnolt was also a well-known pet portraitist. He was frequently hired to paint the portraits of families’ beloved dogs. We don’t know if the following two paintings were made for private clients to memorialize their beloved pets, but they are examples of what Muss-Arnolt's pet portraits would have looked like: Matchless and Denmark. Both are currently in the collection of the National Sporting Library & Museum.
With all of his professional experience depicting dogs in paint and in ink for magazines and personal clients, on top of his experience as a champion dog owner and knowledge of dogs through his involvement with the AKC, it is easy to see why Church & Dwight hired Muss-Arnolt as the artist for their two series of cards featuring dogs. The 1902 Champion Dog card series featured just that, dogs that won prizes at dog shows. Muss-Arnolt made sure to title these paintings with the name of the dog that he painted, and the name of the pictured dog even made it onto the trading cards. We treated 16 paintings from this series. Just as the first series of dogs was aptly named, so was the second 1910 New Series of Dogs in that it featured thirty new and different breeds of dogs from those in the 1902 series. Unfortunately, the names of the dogs in the paintings were not recorded. We treated five paintings from this series.
Thanks to Muss-Arnolt providing us with the dogs’ names in the Championship Dog series though, we were able to find information on fifteen of the dogs in those paintings by digging through the annual AKC Stud Books from the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Nine of the dogs ended up being Champions of Record by the end of their careers. The pointer, Graphic, was brought to the United States from England, with his owner listed as Graphic Kennels out of Jersey City, NJ when he was registered with the AKC. He was already a champion dog in England, winning multiple bench shows and field trials, before coming to the United States to win more accolades here. Graphic Kennels took out an advertisement in the 1887 AKC Stud Book advertising Graphic as not only a proven champion, but a proven stud dog whose puppies had also gone on to win bench shows and field trials. Graphic wasn’t the only dog brought over from England. Beaufort, the mastiff, was also a champion in England prior to coming to America. His owner, W. K. Taunton of England, registered Beaufort with the AKC in 1889 with the assistance of J. L. Winchell, his agent from Fair Haven, VT. Prior to his arrival in the United States, Beaufort had won the Old English Mastiff Club Challenge Cup six times and had been barred from further competition for this cup.
The dog we were most excited to find in the AKC stud books was the beagle, Bacchus, though - a black, white, and tan beagle born in April of 1897. It turns out, Muss-Arnolt used his own beagle, Bacchus, when it came time to paint a card with a beagle on it! After learning so much about him and seeing the care and attention to detail he put into all his paintings of dogs, it was fun to learn that one of the paintings we worked on had a truly personal connection to the artist. Leah, the conservation technician who worked on that specific painting, actually documented the full treatment of that painting step by step, so we hope you look forward to a future post on the painting of Bacchus.
Unfortunately, the only things we were able to find out about Bacchus was when Muss-Arnolt registered him with the AKC in 1898 and that it looks like he fathered beagle puppies registered in later editions of the AKC Stud Books. Even though he was included in the Champion Dog series, it doesn’t look like Bacchus won any bench shows or field trials that we could find. Maybe Muss-Arnolt had high hopes for his dog by including him the series, or maybe he did not care and wanted to include one of his dogs, knowing that his image would be turned into a popular trading card to be spread across the country. Either way, Bacchus and all of the other dogs Muss-Arnolt painted, live on thanks to the cards and the people still collecting and selling them.
Bibliography
American Kennel Club. “Gustav Muss-Arnolt Pen Drawings collection.” American Kennel Club. 2025. https://www.akc.org/about/archive/guide-collections/gustav-muss-arnolt-pen-drawings-collection/. (accessed June 26, 2025).
Muss-Arnolt, Gustav. 1891. “Dogs of High Degree.” Harper’s Weekly, vol. 35, issue 1784, February 28. 148. https://archive.org/details/sim_harpers-weekly_1891-02-28_35_1784/page/148/mode/2up. (accessed June 26, 2025).
Sportsman’s Gallery, Ltd. & Paderewski Fine At, The. 2025. “Gustav Muss-Arnolt 1858-1927.” The Sportsman’s Gallery, Ltd. & Paderewski Fine Art. https://sportsmansgallery.com/artist/gustav-muss-arnolt. (accessed June 26, 2025).
Wikipedia. 2023. “Gustav Muss-Arnolt.” Wikipedia. Last modified July 24, 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Muss-Arnolt. (accessed June 26, 2025).
We also used:
the National Academy of Design’s Annual Exhibition catalogs from 1880, 1881, 1885, 1886, 1887, and 1894, all of which can be accessed through the Getty Research Portal
the American Kennel Club Stud Books from 1885-1909, all of which can be accessed through the Internet Archive
