200 World Famous Paintings, Unlocking the Emotional Codes in 8000 Years of Woofing Art History

When it comes to the world's famous paintings, don't we all think it's so "high class", and when it comes to dogs, a lot of affectionate, cute and cozy feelings will come up in our hearts. So, combining the world's famous paintings with dogs? And what is the marvelous effect?

In fact, the dog as mankind's most faithful and longest animal companion, has been living with mankind *** with more than 30,000 years, very early in the work of art, and stretches to the present day, just people did not pay attention to it.

Writer and art critic Mr. Zhou Wenhan can be described as a person with a heart, because his childhood family had a dog, like dogs, so as an adult in the process of traveling around the world to visit museums, carefully captured and recorded the paintings about the dog, to write this book, "this painting originally has a dog". He selected 200 world-famous paintings from star museums such as the Louvre, the Metropolitan, and the Forbidden City to review the long and friendly interaction between humans and dogs from an art historical perspective. The paintings contain a variety of images of dogs in a thousand different shapes and sizes, unraveling many of the mysteries of dogs and humans and evoking endless emotions, memories and imaginations.

Below, let's follow the imprints in these famous paintings and travel through history to learn about the 8,000-year history of Woofman's strange art and the history of our intimate human emotions with dogs.

First, the origin of the dog: from the wolf to the dog

Dogs, also known as domestic dogs, and human relations, than horses, pigs, cats and all other domestic animals are close and long. As early as in the ancient people rely on the collection of fruits, hunting animals to maintain survival of the times, the dog with the ancestors migrate around, accompanied by human growth and prosperity. Now there are more than 400 kinds of domestic dogs in the world, numbering as many as 900 million.

Scientists have discovered that all dogs have the same ancestor, the Eurasian gray wolf. Archaeologists have deduced from digging up dog skeletons from ancient human life sites, and molecular biologists have deduced from studying these skeletons and the genetic evidence with modern domestic dogs, that people in southern East Asia first domesticated the local Eurasian gray wolf into domestic dogs about 33,000 years ago.

After being domesticated, they became a good assistant to human hunting, and helped people not only exterminate the Eurasian gray wolf, but also hunted around for gray wolves, red wolves, and other kinds of wolves.

In the first half of the 17th century, Alexandre Francois de Bottes, a famous French hunting painter, depicted this scene in Wolf Hunt: a group of hounds surrounding a dying wolf, the picture is vivid, powerful, and perfect! The scene is vivid and powerful, perfectly recreating the history of the Eurasian gray wolf after its domestication. This oil on canvas was painted in 1725 and is currently in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, France. De Bottes was the most popular painter of his time, and King Louis XIV of France commissioned a series of large-scale hunting paintings from him.

But that wasn't the first time dogs made their way into artwork. in 2017, German archaeologists discovered rock paintings of hounds in the desert of northwestern Saudi Arabia, some 8,000 years old. They depict humans holding hounds with pointed ears, short noses and upward curling tails on leather leashes against antelope, goats, deer and lions. Pottery fragments unearthed in Iran have also been found with drawings of dogs from more than 7,000 years ago.

From then on, the image of the dog formally entered the history of human art, craftsmen around the world, artists from the practical artifacts to decorative patterns, to a variety of sculptures, murals, ink paintings, oil paintings, comics, film works, the dog accompanied the emergence of human beings, and they and human beings together to spend the life of the scenes of joy or sadness, through the long years.

Second, from being used by humans to accompanying them

Initially, humans paid most attention to the practical utility of dogs, such as hunting, guarding, and herding. In recent times, human beings have developed more working uses for canines, using war dogs on the battlefield, police dogs used to track criminals and narcotics, search and rescue dogs to participate in rescue work in critical and dangerous situations, and guide dogs to assist the blind in their lives. In the entertainment, the dog can also participate in circus, dogfighting and other programs and performances.

Medieval and Renaissance European aristocrats often hunted in the wild forests, which was not only a form of entertainment, but also a ceremonial act to show courage and strength to other aristocrats and the public. This can be glimpsed in the mid-to-late 15th century painting "Hunting in the Woods" by the painter Paolo Uccello. Similar themes are found in the Spanish painter Goya's 1775 oil on canvas paintings Hunting Quail and Dogs on a Leash, which were, at the time, favorite subjects of the nobility.

In the frigid Arctic, where animals such as cows and horses could not survive, dogsleds were used to transport people and goods. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of 9,000-year-old tribes using dog sleds on Wakkhov Island in Siberia, Russia.

In fact, dogs have been inextricably tied to humans since they first entered works of art. Almost at the same time as the Saudi Arabian petroglyphs appeared, the Siberian human-dog burial tomb, where the owner and his two beloved dogs are laid to rest, next to the dogs, placed collars and spoons, expressing the owner's 8000-year-old love.

If the value of the dog is mainly practical, the image of the dog's expression, action is relatively simple, then from the 15th century is full of metaphorical symbols of the tapestry "Maiden and Unicorn", the dog became "chaste and pure, a symbol of fidelity". Since then, the dog has often appeared in paintings of marriage and love ceremonies.

Dogs gained an important place in the human family in the 19th century, when it became common for middle- and upper-class Westerners living in towns and cities to own pet dogs and treat them as members of the family. The popularity of portraits of children with dogs and women with dogs is a testament to this.

Human affection for dogs changed public opinion and the law. In 1824, Britain appeared the world's first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, from the Queen down to the ordinary people need to defend the rights of animals; 18345, Britain has the world's first law to protect animals. Since then, other European and American countries have passed similar laws, and human beings began to protect their dogs like family members.

Third, the dog in the history of human development represents the culture and emotion

In the human nomadic civilization and farming civilization, the dog's cultural allegory has a huge difference. In farming societies, the dog is often associated with negative moral images, and there are many such idioms in folklore: "wolf heart, dog lungs", "dog-like", "fox friend", "dog jumping over the wall" and so on, all of which are expressions of infidelity, treachery and other bad qualities. In contrast, dogs have a higher status in nomadic culture. In the mythology of the Middle East, Persia, India, and Northern Europe, dogs are gods and demons that guard the gates of hell.

The revolutionary shift between ancient and modern dog culture occurred in the 17th-19th centuries, when the rise of the urban middle class in Europe stimulated the development of pet dog breeding, and dog ownership became a dominant social culture. The world's first dog show appeared in 1859 in Newcastle, and the first major dog club appeared in 1873. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, canine care became a major industry, and there was a huge popularity of cultural products about dogs, with books and magazines, newspapers, knowledge, and stories that gave dogs a more positive and friendly image of loyalty and friendliness.

Along with this, in art, the dog's expression of human feelings is more colorful and delicate, goodwill, anticipation, longing, joy, sadness, and even jealousy can be embodied in the dog's posture and eyes. In 1861, the London female painter Emily Hunter and her brother William Holman Hunter painted the watercolor "Jealous Jessie", "Jessie" quietly lying on the grass, chin pressed a peacock feather, eyes full of jealousy, let a person associated with a lot of pictures outside the emotions and stories.

Nowadays, with the development of modern technology and changes in human lifestyles, the "practical function" of dogs in people's lives is becoming weaker and weaker, but the interaction with human emotions is getting closer and closer, bringing people endless comfort and joy. Currently, there are more than 200 million pet dogs in the world, about 30 million families in China have dogs, dog-related industries are spread all over the world, dog-related images and stories permeate all kinds of literary works, and the emotional interaction between humans and dogs has become more and more profound and frequent.

From the birth to the growth of the dog, from hunting to companionship, this book allows us to recognize the connection between humans and dogs as an integral part of the evolution of human civilization. These great artistic paintings not only bear witness to a lost history, but also take us back to man's own role in the development of civilization and inspire us to better understand our own human emotions through our bond with dogs. We need to learn how to live in harmony with our animal companions as well as ourselves in the future, and how to spend our lives with quality and warmth.