Cosmos Dog, designed in 1989 by George Rodrigue, is a newly released print in 2023. This Estate Edition of 125, produced in Paris, France, measures 28 x 18 1/2 inches and is available for purchase from Rodrigue Studios or online.
Like many early depictions of the Blue Dog, Cosmos Dog alludes to the dog’s origins story. Cosmos Dog shows a blue-gray dog with pointy, scraggly ears sitting atop a tomb in a Louisiana landscape. Just beyond the tomb, two oak trees reach towards a swirling sky illuminated by the full moon.
In the 1980s, when George Rodrigue first created what would become the Blue Dog, he was painting the loup-garou, a werewolf dog said to prowl about the cemeteries and sugarcane fields in Louisiana. As a child, Rodrigue’s mother would warn him that if he didn’t behave during the day, the loup-garou would get him at night. Rodrigue’s early versions of the dog were inspired by the idea of a ragged werewolf slinking through the landscape.
Rodrigue imagined the light of a full moon casting a grayish, blue shadow onto the creature’s fur. Although today, the Blue Dog is considered a symbol of modernism in Rodrigue’s work, works like Cosmos Dog demonstrate the dog’s roots in Rodrigue’s Cajun heritage.
Based on a painting by the same title, this lithograph of Cosmos Dog was created using a hand-pulled stone printmaking process. These detailed lithographs were produced in Paris, France, by a team of skilled artisans specializing in this traditional printmaking process. The resulting image does an impressive job of capturing the moody spirit and painterly detail from the original work.
*Sold Unframed. Price and availability subject to change without notice