As mentioned in the biographical data, Toulouse-Lautrec began his artistic career as an animal painter, at Princeteau’s studio in 1881. Apparently, his nervous and prodigiously vital The Dog (Sketch of Touc?) was created before 1881, thus showing the young artist’s natural interest, which was shared by his family, in painting animals and his wish to emulate late works by Delacroix, such as Summer - Diana Discovered by Actaeon with its three splendid dogs. Possibly here the model was Touc, one of the Lautrec family’s bulldogs, due to its similarity to a couple of other contemporary portraits of the same animal, conserved in a private collection (Camesasca 1987, p. 220). While in Dortu’s opinion (1971, p. 60) the painting should be dated 1881, Camesasca has an earlier dating, in 1880, “when Toulouse-Lautrec, as we see here, made use of color impastos applied with the handle of the brush”.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

---