George Rodrigue
Painted Cajun Louisiana under dark oaks, and then a blue dog that would not leave.
George Rodrigue was born in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1944 and spent his early career painting Cajun life — figures under heavy, low, black oak trees, lit as though by a flash. In 1984 a commission to illustrate a ghost story required the loup-garou, the Cajun werewolf, and he painted it from a photograph of his own dead spaniel Tiffany. The result would not go away: the Blue Dog, with yellow eyes, became a national image through Absolut and Xerox advertising and hundreds of paintings, and he spent the rest of his life both exploiting and being defined by it. He died in 2013.
The Blue Dog dominates the market, and the early Cajun landscapes are a smaller, distinct and critically better-regarded field. The practical problem is edition volume: silkscreens, giclees and licensed reproductions were published in very large numbers over three decades, and owners frequently believe they hold something scarcer than they do. Original acrylics on canvas sit well above them. Certificates from the Rodrigue studio and the foundation are expected, and unauthorised reproductions of the Blue Dog images circulate widely.
If you own a work by George Rodrigue
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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