Martin Theodore Ward (c.1799-1874) trained to paint animals under Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) – the man widely accepted as one of the greatest animal artists in history – but more of a rake’s progress than a monarch of the glen, his artistic credibility was tightly tied to a self-destructive personality.

The extant collection in York Art Gallery of Ward’s work consists of character-filled canines that are in stark contrast to Landseer’s majestic stag, but quite apposite to Ward’s own propensity for a life without refinement. A self-ascribed mongrel of the art world, Ward spent the majority of his life in poverty in York, struggling to find work and with only a small white dog for company.

His training and family connections – son of eminent engraver William Ward (1762-1826) and nephew of James Ward (1769-1859) –propelled Ward into the elite circles of artistic patronage. He exhibited at the Royal Academy copiously between 1820 and 1825, but his eccentric nature found him entering into a dispute with the hanging committee of the school who he felt had shown him some affront in the placing of his pictures.

Not long after this Ward left London and travelled north to Sheffield, where the growing art market provided a good incubator for his success. However, his moderate wealth led him into a social life revolving around disreputable inns and taverns and questionable company. It wasn’t long before the debts mounted up and Ward found himself being carted further up the country and incarcerated in York Castle Prison.

According to John Ward Knowles’ encyclopaedia of York Artists, it was whilst imprisoned that Ward was discovered to be an accomplished artist by a bailiff, who then arranged for his release and subsequently ‘farmed his talent, supplying him with all the necessities of life but no more, and taking all his productions.’

Luckily, Ward managed to escape this entrapment and took up a room with only a small white terrier for companionship.

At this point Knowles describes Ward thus:

‘His costume was both seedy and greasy with a little short pipe sticking out of his side pocket, for better safety it was fastened by a piece of string to a button hole. He rarely left his room during the day unless, by some oversight, he had not obtained his requirements for painting purposes and he never allowed a person, male or female, to pass inside his door.’

This remained true until the artist J. C. Swallow, the art master at the York School of Art at the time, gained entry and offered to paint landscape scenes as backdrops for Ward’s dog subjects, which until then had been framed by monochrome panels.

The Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1879 is recorded as displaying nine of Ward’s paintings, suggesting an upward trajectory in his career.

However, Knowles states Ward much preferred presenting his paintings to the landlords of his local inn in exchange for hoppy sustenance and shelter in the snug.

Unfortunately, this hand to mouth way of life could not be sustained indefinitely, and when Ward grew old and was unable to produce work the local landlords did not look kindly upon him. Ward died impoverished in 1874.

Unfortunately no account testifies as to the fate of his small white terrier.