Misse and Luttine

Misse and Luttine, painted by Jean-Baptiste Oudry in 1729, depicts two of the celebrated royal hounds belonging to Louis XV, and it belongs to the prestigious series of dog portraits that Oudry painted for the French court through the late 1720s and 1730s. The royal pack at Versailles was one of the most famous in Europe, and Oudry was appointed its principal painter, responsible for documenting individual dogs with the same care a portraitist brought to human sitters. These animal portraits were taken entirely seriously: the dogs had names, lineages, and distinctive characters that Oudry was expected to capture. The tradition of royal dog portraiture extended from Velázquez and the Spanish court to the English and French monarchies, but Oudry brought to it a naturalist precision and warmth that makes his canine portraits among the most vivid works of the French Rococo period.

Oudry renders the dogs' coats with meticulous attention to texture — the way fur falls, catches light, and varies in density — applying paint in fine, directional strokes that follow the lie of each animal's hair. The compositions place the dogs in landscape settings that provide environmental context. The palette is warm and naturalistic.