Transforming pet photos into old masters is big business for Dutch artist Tein Lucasson. In 2016, when the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam released many of its works into the public domain, Lucasson digitally inserted a photo of his beloved labradoodle Ventje into one of the paintings. Since then, the Dutch graphic designer and visual artist has turned hundreds of cats, dogs and guinea pigs into works of art for his website L’animorphe.
These are collected, along with his portraits of wild animals such as zebras, flamingos and raccoons, in a series of books published by teNeues . “It started as something I did for fun and it turned into a company,” he says. “The portraits are not meant to be anything other than a remembrance of the love of a dog or a cat. But it’s turned into something bigger.”
