Good Dog! Jean-Baptiste Oudry and the Politics of Animal Painting

Tenth Annual Michael L. Rosenberg Lecture

Dog painting was serious business in 18th-century France. Jean-Baptiste Oudry's Water Spaniel Confronting a Heron and Study of a Hound Baying are more than simple studies of animals. Dr. Amy Freund, assistant professor of art history at Texas Christian University, takes a closer look at these paintings in which the dogs' bodies stand in for the human bodies of their owners and viewers, serving as proxies in the era's most pressing debates about personhood, violence, and privilege.  

November 7, 2013

Horchow Auditorium