Dog painting may fetch $1.2 mln at New York auction

NEW YORK, June 16 (Reuters) You won't see any dogs playing poker or chewing slippers in the art for sale next week at Christie's.

Although it won't include anything close to the much-imitated images of anthropomorphized hounds that have graced rumpus rooms across the United States, the auction house expects its New York dog art sale on June 22 to net more than 3 million dollars, which Christies said would be the most valuable ever in the dog art category.

The highlight of the sale is a life-size portrait of ''Neptune,'' a rangy, muscular Newfoundland painted by 19th Century British artist Sir Edwin Landseer. The painting is estimated to bring between 800,000 dollars and 1.2 million dollars, Christie's said.

Neptune's portrait is nothing short of heroic. With leaden storm clouds approaching, the Newfoundland stands on an outcropping as fishermen in the background pull nets and boats from the sea. The suggestion is that Neptune is ready and game for a rescue.

The painting is framed with timbers pulled from the warship HMS Temeraire, which saw action in the battle of Trafalgar.

Less dramatic and less well bred is ''Pointy,'' painted by the American John Singer Sargent in Paris in the early 1880s for the dog's owner, Louise Burckhardt. Although Sargent is best known for his portraits of society women, the depiction of Burckhardt's mutt is expected to bring between 60,000 dollars and 80,000 dollars.

Clare McKeon, a vice president at Christie's, said the sale of dog art should have broad appeal because the artwork features well-known artists and a wide range of breeds.

Some consider works like Sargent's more serious than those of Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, the American who painted a well-known series of pictures of dogs playing poker that have been widely reproduced as puzzles and prints hung on family-room walls.

But ''A Bold Bluff'' and ''Waterloo: Two,'' two of the paintings from Coolidge's series, sold for 590,400 dollars at a 2005 sale at Doyle New York's annual Dogs in Art Auction.

Reuters JK DB0850