Goya’s ‘The Dog’ forms part of one of the artist’s fourteen ‘Black Paintings’ which he painted directly on the walls of his house which was called La Quinta del Sordo. The painting has been analysed many times by art critics who have sought possible influences that were exerted on the painting. Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘The Monk by the Sea’ has a very similar theme to ‘The Dog’ in that it depicts a tiny figure which is being dwarfed by an absolutely featureless landscape. One can see the influence Goya’s painting exerted over Pierre Bonnard’s ‘The Red-Checkered Tablecloth’ of 1910 though the cheerfulness of Bonnard’s piece is in direct opposition to Goya’s portentous piece.

Antonio Saura claimed that ‘The Dog’ was ‘the world’s most beautiful picture’ and Rafael Canogar asserted that it was the first Symbolist painting in the Western world and a ‘visual poem’. Joan Miro asked to see just two paintings on his last ever trip to the Prado which were Velazquez’s ‘Las Meninas’ and Goya’s, not flower delivery Cardiff, but ‘The Dog’.