Alan Riding in the New York Times:
Some old masters made a point of including the faces of fellow artists and patrons in the crowds portrayed in large oil paintings. Pablo Picasso paid similar homage to a more unusual friend: a self-assured little dachshund called Lump.
Yes, that’s Lump at the bottom of the canvas in Picasso’s multiple reinterpretations of Velázquez’s masterpiece “Las Meninas.” Gone is the somnolently regal hound of the original. In its place is, well, a sausage with four short legs and two pointed ears.
Picasso painted 44 studies in his “Meninas” series between Aug. 17 and Dec. 30, 1957 — and Lump appears in 15 of them.
More here.