Dogs - The dog in the art and in the literature

The dog is a theme that in all times has inspired the artists and the writers.
In art, it appears represented in scenes of hunting, in works of the most ancient civilizations, alike, for example, in Assyrian reliefs, Egyptian mural paintings and rock engravings of the Bronze Age. In the ancient Egyptian thumbs were found the statuettes of dogs of the harrier type. In ancient China it was used to bury statuettes of dogs in the thumb of human beings. Some were found, among others, figures in argyle that by the flat snout and skipped eyes, they are very alike the actual pugs.

The pequineses were the favorite dogs of the imperial family appear in many ancient Chinese documents and they served as model for the stylized figures, with traces alike the lions´ that were placed at the entrance of the entrance of the temples.

In Europe, during the Renaissance and the Baroque period, the dogs appeared frequently in paintings of family and rustic scenes. Later, especially in England, the artists painted scenes of dogs that included, sometimes, authentic "portraits" of those animals. Finally, during the 19th century, they appear as central motive of sentimental and emotive scenes.

In literature, the dog is described mainly in its quality of companion of the man. In the Old Testament it appears always mentioned with a certain disdain and we suppose that such attitude of the Israelis was due to the existence, at that time, of a great quantity of famished dogs. On the contrary, the Greeks liked them very much that can be proved through their literature where they mention many names of dogs. Argos, the faithful dog of Ulysses, was the only one that recognized him when he returned after a long trip.

In the modern literature, a great number of narrations about dogs is due to Anglo-Saxon writers. They accomplish an important role in the works by David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens that is the one that described them with greater abundance of details.

Nowadays, several writers, among them, James Thurber, Jack London, James Oliver Curwood and Conan Doyle, they present the dog in their works, as a spare character; a common characteristic of those descriptions consists in attributing to the dog some purely human qualities, distinguishing those as much by our vices as by our virtues.