George Rodrigue — The Blue Dog's Birthplace

George Rodrigue was born in 1944 on West Main Street in New Iberia. He started painting in the third grade while bedridden with polio. He formally studied art at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, then returned to Louisiana in the late 1960s. He painted Louisiana landscapes, then outdoor family gatherings and southwest Louisiana genre scenes from the 19th and early 20th centuries. His paintings often included moss-clad oak trees common to Acadiana. His first exhibition in 1970 sold out entirely despite a newspaper headline calling his work "Dreary, Monotonous." His early notable works include *The Aioli Dinner* and *The Class of Marie Courrege*, which won honorable mention from Le Salon in Paris in 1975. *Le Figaro* dubbed him "America's Rousseau." Between 1985 and 1989 he painted *Saga of the Acadians*, fifteen paintings chronicling the Acadian journey from France to Nova Scotia to Louisiana. In 1984 he painted the Blue Dog for *Bayou*, a book of Louisiana ghost stories. The painting was titled *Watch Dog*. The dog was based on the loup-garou legend his mother used to scare him as a child, and used the shape and stance of his deceased dog Tiffany. The ghostly blue spaniel with a white nose and yellow eyes catapulted him to worldwide fame in the mid-1990s. In 1992 Absolut Vodka honored him as an Absolut Vodka artist, joining Andy Warhol and others in a national ad campaign. Blue Dog paintings have sold for over $1 million at auction. Days after Hurricane Katrina, Rodrigue created *We Will Rise Again*, depicting the American flag covered with water, to benefit the Red Cross. The Blue Dog was partly submerged, and its eyes, normally yellow, were red with a broken heart. It was the first of five works he created for Blue Dog Relief. As of September 2006, the donation tally to Blue Dog Relief beneficiaries was $700,000. He sent prints of *To Stay Alive We Need Levee 5* to every member of Congress. In 2009 he formed the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts, which advocates for visual arts in children's development. Rodrigue died December 14, 2013. His funeral mass was held at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. His galleries on Royal Street in New Orleans and in Lafayette both closed. The New Iberia he painted is still recognizable along East Main Street and the Teche.