Pere Ynglada was a Catalan draughtsman born in Cuba in 1881. Son of merchants, he spent his childhood between New York and Barcelona. He studied at the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc and, in his early years, contributed to magazines such as Papitu and L’Esquella de la Torratxa under the pseudonym Yda. Ynglada lived in Paris for a little over three decades. There he married Georgette Guillot and worked with numerous publishers and magazines.
He was noted for his drawings of the Music Hall, the circus, urban aspects and, above all, those of animals, which made him famous. When he died, he established the Ynglada-Guillot Drawing Prize in Barcelona, and a year later, in 1959, the publishing house Aedos published his memoirs under the title Records i opinions de Pere Ynglada. Our drawing was used to illustrate the cover of this book. It shows Ynglada and his dog Snow next to an ukiyo-e by Kitagawa Utamaro.
Snow was a French bulldog. Ynglada’s countless drawings of the pet in his notebooks, as well as photographs, magazine illustrations and descriptions, demonstrate his extraordinary attachment. In addition to appearing with Ynglada himself on the cover of his memoirs, Snow was also on the cover of the magazine Los Deportes in its 15 June 1910 issue.

Below the self-portrait is a sheet of notebook paper (160 × 195 mm) with several of Snow’s sketches made in ink.