Goya's dogs: royal hunts, tapestry designs and the dog in the Black Paintings

Francisco de Goya (1746 to 1828) painted and drew dogs from his first royal commission to the last years of his life. This page follows his dogs in order: the hunting dogs he designed for royal tapestries, the dogs beside kings and noblewomen in his portraits, the dog alone in one of his Black Paintings, and the strange dogs of his late drawings. It draws on the online catalogue of the Fundación Goya en Aragón, a foundation that publishes an online catalogue of his works, and on the Cleveland Museum of Art. For dogs in art before and after Goya, start with the dogs in art guide.

Dogs for the royal tapestry factory

In the 1770s and 1780s Goya designed tapestries for the Spanish court. The Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara wove wall hangings for royal palaces such as El Pardo. A painter supplied a cartoon, a full-size painting that the weavers copied thread by thread. Several of Goya's cartoons have dogs in them.

Dogs on the Leash, 1775

This cartoon shows two chained mastiffs in a landscape, next to two shotguns and other hunting gear. The Fundación Goya en Aragón says it measures 112 by 174 cm and was designed to hang above a door or a window. It was paired with another cartoon, Hunting with a Decoy.

The foundation is frank about its quality: most experts agree that it is one of Goya's most impersonal works. Its history is eventful. In 1869 it disappeared from the Royal Palace in Madrid with six other cartoons. Raimundo de Madrazo found it in Paris, bought it and gave it to the Prado Museum in 1895.

Hunter and his Dogs, 1775

This tall, narrow cartoon, 268 by 67.5 cm, shows a hunter from behind, a shotgun over his shoulder, holding the leash of two dogs. The foundation explains a curious detail. The finished tapestry also shows a second hunter on horseback. In the painted cartoon the rider was covered over with bushes, and today only an observant viewer can find him. The foundation says nobody knows who covered him or when, though one scholar thinks Goya himself removed the rider to balance the composition.

A preparatory drawing survives for the hunter with the dogs. The foundation says this suggests Goya made studies from life and used them in his cartoons, which explains the natural look of the figure.

The Dog, 1780: a lost cartoon

Not every cartoon survives. The foundation says Goya delivered one called The Dog to the factory on 24 January 1780, and that it disappeared before an inventory taken in 1834. Its design is known from the tapestry woven from it. Goya's own invoice describes four men: two in the front playing with a dog and putting a ball in its mouth, and two talking behind. The foundation reports that the scholar Tomlinson read the ball and the dog as sexual symbols, and adds that the dog was traditionally associated with lust and sensuality.

Boys with Hunting Dogs, 1788

In this cartoon, two fashionably dressed boys stand beside two large dogs on leads. The dogs wear muzzles and have stopped so the boys can stroke them. The foundation says the muzzles show they are hunting dogs. Earlier inventories had seen only one dog and called it a mastiff. Goya painted the group from a low viewpoint because the tapestry was meant to hang above a door, so the figures look monumental from the floor. The cartoon is 112 by 145 cm and belongs to the Prado.

Dogs in Goya's portraits

In the 1780s Goya became a sought-after portrait painter. Dogs appear beside several of his sitters, the people he painted, and each has a reason to be there.

Charles III Hunting, around 1786 to 1788

King Charles III of Spain stands in hunting clothes, holding a shotgun in his left hand and suede gloves in his right. A dog lies at his feet. The Fundación Goya en Aragón records two inscriptions: "Goya lo hizo" ("By Goya") at the lower right, and "REY N. Señor" ("KING our Lord") on the dog's collar. The foundation calls the king a great lover of the hunt and says the portrait shows the influence of the hunting portraits of Velázquez. This version, 210 by 127 cm, is in a private collection, and the foundation lists it as attributed to Goya. A replica is in the Prado.

The Marchioness of Pontejos, around 1786

This full-length portrait, 210.3 by 127 cm, shows a young noblewoman in a grey dress with lace, pink ribbons and flowers, holding a rose. The foundation says Goya probably painted it in 1786, the year she married Francisco Antonio Moñino, Spain's ambassador to Portugal. A dog stands by her side. The foundation calls it "a symbol of faithfulness", painted with light brushstrokes but realist in style. It links the landscape background to French and British portrait styles of the time. The portrait is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

The Duchess of Alba, 1795

Goya painted Cayetana, the 13th Duchess of Alba, several times. In this portrait she wears a long white dress with a red sash and red ribbons, and points down at an inscription on the ground dedicating the picture to her. The foundation adds a detail about the dog: "By her side we can see a white poodle, which was painted in at a later date. Its back leg is decorated with a red bow matching those worn by the Duchess." The portrait, 194 by 130 cm, belongs to the Fundación Casa de Alba in Madrid.

The Half-Submerged Dog, around 1820 to 1823

Late in life Goya painted a group of dark pictures straight onto plaster walls, now known as the Black Paintings. One of them shows only the head of a dog, above a large, empty area of colour. Our guide to famous paintings of dogs describes the painting and how the Prado reads it. The foundation's catalogue adds three facts.

• Where it hung. It was on the wall to the right of the door into the room.
• How it was moved. It was painted in oil on plaster and later transferred to canvas. It measures 131 by 79 cm and belongs to the Prado.
• What the dog is looking at. The dog looks up at something outside the picture. The foundation says the scholar Arnaiz found a photographic negative taken by the photographer Laurent before the transfer. It shows that the dog was looking at two birds flying in the sky. The birds were lost when the painting was taken off the wall.

The foundation still calls the work enigmatic, and says Goya painted the dog "with just a few brushstrokes".

Dogs in Goya's last drawings

In his final years Goya kept drawing dogs, in small albums and on tiny supports.

• Man Delousing a Little Dog, 1824 to 1825. A man in a white shirt with rolled sleeves picks fleas from a small dog, probably a poodle. Goya painted it in watercolour on ivory, 8.9 by 8.5 cm, and left the bare ivory showing for the dog's white fur. It belongs to the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden.
• The Lady with the Little Dogs, around 1824 to 1828. A young woman kneels on the floor and turns to stroke her small lapdogs. The foundation reports the scholar Gassier's view that she is seeking comfort for some sorrow in the company of her pets. The drawing is in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
• The Flying Dog, around 1824 to 1828. A winged creature dives toward the ground, showing its teeth. Its head, body and tail are a mastiff's, but it has the webbed feet of a water bird and large feathered wings. It wears a spiked collar, the kind sheepdogs wore to protect their necks from wolves. The foundation says no convincing meaning has been found. One scholar read it as a bad shepherd attacking his own flock, a criticism of bad priests. Another, Jonathan Brown, rejected that, reminding readers that the dog has traditionally been a symbol of fidelity.

Goya also made prints with dogs. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds two plates from his bullfighting series of 1816, They Loose Dogs on the Bull and The Dog Let Loose on the Bull.

Goya's dogs at a glance

What Goya's dogs suggest for your own dog's portrait

Two of Goya's portrait dogs carry clear signs of who they belong to. A king's hound wears a collar naming its master. A duchess's poodle wears a bow in her own colours, painted in after the rest. You can think the same way about a portrait of your own dog: which colours suit its coat, and what would it wear if it had a place at court? The cover of this page shows a Golden Retriever from the studio examples in Purrealism's Regency Era style, which draws on the fashions of Goya's time.

For the painters of French royal hunting dogs a generation earlier, read about Oudry and Desportes. For the long tradition of the dog as a sign of fidelity that Jonathan Brown mentions, see what dogs mean in paintings. When you are ready, you can choose a style and start in the portrait studio.