Abstract

The dog, seen today as the symbol of faith and alertness, has been present in pictorial arts, especially in Flemish and Dutch painting since the 15th century. Over time, this animal has lost its aggressive character in various forms of representation and has become a somewhat indispensable element of genre paintings. Our analysis aims to study the dogs which appear in the sketches and paintings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze. We wish to show the different roles that can be attributed to the dogs in the artist’s works, mainly through the analysis of his paintings in Diderot’s Salons, and also in works of less known art critics, such as Mathon de La Cour and abbé de la Porte.