“So fond was the Landry Family of their chicken, Clotile, that they commissioned this portrait of her. I call it…The Two Hundred Pound Chicken on the Bayou!” — G.R.
The larger-than-life chicken has been pushed to the front of the canvas, and just like Rodrigue’s human figures, the bird is locked into the landscape by the tree trunk behind it. Standing on the dock, the chicken calls to mind later images of the Blue Dog, first done two years prior to this painting, and adds a whimsical element to the landscape. Like many of Rodrigue’s paintings, the river or pathway functions as a compositional device but can be hard to decipher as one or the other, much like Louisiana’s landscape is often a confusing maze of land and water. The inclusion of the dock in this painting indicates that Rodrigue intended this image to be of a river.
“So fond was the Landry Family of their chicken, Clotile, that they commissioned this portrait of her. I call it…The Two Hundred Pound Chicken on the Bayou!” — G.R.
The larger-than-life chicken has been pushed to the front of the canvas, and just like Rodrigue’s human figures, the bird is locked into the landscape by the tree trunk behind it. Standing on the dock, the chicken calls to mind later images of the Blue Dog, first done two years prior to this painting, and adds a whimsical element to the landscape. Like many of Rodrigue’s paintings, the river or pathway functions as a compositional device but can be hard to decipher as one or the other, much like Louisiana’s landscape is often a confusing maze of land and water. The inclusion of the dock in this painting indicates that Rodrigue intended this image to be of a river.