# Dog Pointing a Partridge [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [OUDRY, Jean-Baptiste]() - Date: 1701-1750 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 129 x 162 cm ## Commentary Dog Pointing a Partridge 1725 Oil on canvas, 129 x 162 cm The Hermitage, St. Petersburg By the time this picture was painted in 1725, Oudry had already been a member of the Académie Royale for six years. He was well established and much sought after, and enjoyed a healthy rivalry with the older François Desportes. Dog portraiture began in France at the court of Louis XV, who commissioned <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/o/oudry/misselut.html'\)" href="/html/o/oudry/misselut.html">portraits of his favourite hounds</a from Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and the genre has its origins in the art of venery, particularly the <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/s/snyders/2/boarhunt.html'\)" href="/html/s/snyders/2/boarhunt.html">hunting scenes of Frans Snyders.</a> In England, where the emphasis in hunting was increasingly being placed upon the performance of individual hounds, which led to intense rivalry among the landed elite, this was reflected in the <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/w/wootton/hounds.html'\)" href="/html/w/wootton/hounds.html">paintings of John Wootton</a> and <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/t/tilleman/hounds.html'\)" href="/html/t/tilleman/hounds.html">Peter Tillemans;</a> the former of whom in particular started to produce portraits of dogs in the mid eighteenth century. Fine examples of Wootton's work in this manner include the mock heroic portrait of Horace Walpole’s favourite dog Patapan, painted in 1743. However, it was <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/s/stubbs/spaniel.html'\)" href="/html/s/stubbs/spaniel.html">Stubbs,</a> a generation later, who really developed the genre, working, as he was, at a time when dogs were becoming increasingly valued not only as sporting trophies, but as objects of interest in themselves. By the late eighteenth century, the dog had gained a new status as a prized possession within English households which it had not formerly enjoyed. Stubbs's highly sensitive paintings of these animals are executed with infinite attention to detail and are possessed with boundless character and charm. Whilst they are seldom uninteresting as paintings, at their best they are small masterpieces. ## Related artworks - [Allegory of Europe]() - [Boar Hunt]() - [Dead Roe]() - [Dead Wolf]() - [Farmhouse]() - [Henri Camille, Chevalier de Beringhen \(detail\)]() - [Henri Camille, Chevalier de Beringhen]() - [Hot Cockles \(La Main Chaude\)]() - [Hound with Gun and Dead Game]() - [Landscape with a Brace of Partridges and a Hare]() - [Misse and Luttine]() - [Stag Hunt]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()