1944-2013. Born and raised in southwest Louisiana, “Cajun Country,” George Rodrigue preserved on his canvas what he feared was his dying heritage — including its land, people, traditions and mythology. It was a Cajun legend, the loup-garou, that spawned his most famous series,
2026 Emmy® Award Winner BLUE: The Life and Art of George Rodrigue is airing on public TV stations and streaming exclusively via PBS Passport. Presented by WLAE New Orleans and distributed by American Public Television.
“I grew up feeling a strong relationship to the old things, to the old culture, and I got a stronger feeling when I went to Los Angeles to school. I really started to understand how different I was and how different my Louisiana was.”
The Bayou Collection by George Rodrigue (1944-2013) is on view at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, Mississippi (August 10, 2026–January 9, 2027). Organized by the LSU Museum of Art, the exhibition presents all forty of the collection’s original paintings created between 1981 and 1984 for […]
I’ve always approached painting knowing that my job is not to make an accurate representation of a subject–
IT’S GOT TO TRANSCEND THAT.
New Rodrigue Estate Release!
This newly released estate edition is based on Rodrigue’s 1994 painting Gettin’ Back to Nature. In the Cajun paintings of the 1970s and 1980s, Rodrigue set figures into the Louisiana landscape as if they had been cut out and pasted there—flat, frontal, and locked against dark oaks and a compressed sky. That device was meant to picture Acadian history: families who left France for Nova Scotia, were expelled in the Grand Dérangement, and finally settled under the oaks of south Louisiana. He used the same principle for the Blue Dog.
Here the dog fills the height of the picture and sits off-center, while the oak’s branches divide the blue sky into distinct shapes. Placing the Blue Dog in that Acadiana setting draws a line from the earlier Cajun figures through the Blue Dog series of the 1990s.
Gettin’ Back to Nature
1994/2026
Silkscreen on paper
12 x 16 inches (image)
Edition of 175
Available at Rodrigue Studios and online at Link in Bio ⬆️
Two Gulf South visionaries, one conversation.
George Rodrigue’s complete Bayou Collection—all forty paintings made between 1981 and 1984 for the book Bayou—is on view at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art @wamamuseum in Ocean Springs through January 9, 2027.
The essay now on the studio site looks at what happens when Rodrigue’s dark, oak-framed Cajun folklore sits beside Walter Anderson’s luminous, observational Mississippi coast. Same Gulf South. Different languages. Both insisting that this landscape and its stories belong in the American canon.
Among the forty works is Watch Dog (1983)—the loup-garou that became the first Blue Dog.
Read the full essay at Link Tree in bio ⬆️
Discover the original painting, “My Favorite Part of Town” a striking piece by George Rodrigue from 1991 (private collection). This 30 x 24-inch oil on canvas is our featured Catalogue Raisonné work of the week.
If you own a unique George Rodrigue artwork, the Rodrigue family invites you to share details for inclusion in the comprehensive catalogue raisonné documenting his life’s work.
For submission guidelines and more information, visit https://georgerodrigue.com/catalogue-raisonne/ or reach out at [email protected]
In 1996, George Rodrigue created a series of five monumental Blue Dog works, each measuring 14 feet high by 8 feet wide. Painted in acrylic on vinyl, the banners were installed in the interior of Union Station in Washington, D.C., for Rodrigue’s Blue Dog for President exhibition. Created during a presidential election year, the works welcomed visitors into a show of patriotic-themed Blue Dog paintings.
Of the five banners, one entered the permanent collection of the LSU Museum of Art, two remain in the Rodrigue Family Trust, and two were acquired by Texas businessman and major Rodrigue collector Don Sanders. Rodrigue Studios is now pleased to offer these two works from the Sanders collection — the largest Rodrigue paintings ever to come to market.
Due to their scale, Rodrigue painted the series in an industrial warehouse rather than his studio. Working with rich, visible brushstrokes, he enlarged the Blue Dog to a size that underscores its transformation from the Cajun loup-garou into a powerful graphic symbol, emphasizing the dog’s distinctive shape and intense yellow eyes.
In one banner, the Blue Dog appears against a black background wearing a red necktie patterned with white stars — a direct reference to presidential campaign imagery and the American flag. In the other, the Blue Dog stands against a color-blocked background of red and yellow, the composition reduced to its essential elements: the dog’s silhouette, its captivating yellow eyes, and the saturated color fields.
On the occasion of the nation’s 250th anniversary, Rodrigue Studios presents these banners as a recognition of George Rodrigue’s contribution to America’s visual language through enduring cultural symbols such as the Blue Dog. Both works are now on view for the first time in New Orleans at the artist’s flagship gallery on Royal Street.
Untitled, Blue Dog with Tie (Blue Dog For President Banner)
Untitled, Blue Dog on Red and Yellow (Blue Dog For President Banner)
1996
Acrylic on vinyl
168 x 96 in. or 14 x 8 ft
Available and on display at Rodrigue Studios New Orleans
Inquiries: [email protected]
#GeorgeRodrigue #BlueDog #RodrigueStudios #FrenchQuarter
Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847) is an epic poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, describing the tragic account of two lovers, Evangeline and Gabriel, separated on their wedding day during the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia.
Reunited in old age, Evangeline, now a nun, tended to Gabriel in the last few minutes of his life, when she happened upon him by chance as she cared for the sick in Pennsylvania.
This heartbreaking and romantic story inspired many artists, including George Rodrigue, who painted her more than one hundred times in his career, oftentimes painting her as she waited for Gabriel beneath the Evangeline Oak in southwest Louisiana. He used several models for Evangeline, including a waitress he barely knew, a silent movie actress (Dolores del Rio) he never knew, and most often the daughter of his good friends Bertha and Curtis Bernard. He photographed Diane Bernard Keogh during several sessions in the 1970s and used these same photographs for Evangeline paintings over the next twenty years, including this one.
A Basket of Roses
An Original Silkscreen Designed by George Rodrigue
Designed 1989/Printed 2017
26 x 20 inches (image) 31 x 23 inches (paper)
Estate Stamped, Open Edition
Available at Rodrigue Studios and online: https://shop.georgerodrigue.com/products/a-basket-of-roses-1
Blue Dog 2027 - Buy Now!
The new Blue Dog 2027 Wall Calendar features twelve works by George Rodrigue, bringing his iconic Blue Dog to every month of the year.
Now in stock on Amazon at Link in Bio ⬆️
#GeorgeRodrigue #BlueDog #BlueDog2027 #LouisianaArt
Who Dat from Rodrigue Studios. ⚜️💙
Good luck to the New Orleans Saints as they open their 60th season in Detroit today.
Pictured: We Are Marching Again, 2006, Original silkscreen by George Rodrigue, 23 x 18 inches
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, George created Blue Dog Relief — a series of prints that raised nearly $3.5 million for Gulf Coast humanitarian, arts, and education needs. We Are Marching Again was the strongest sign of optimism in that series: Blue Dog in Saints black and gold, eyes forward, as New Orleans and its team began to look ahead again. Rita Benson LeBlanc and the Saints championed the print throughout the 2006 season — the first season back in the Superdome.
Twenty years later, that same spirit still marches.
Today this print is not sold in Rodrigue galleries. It lives on exclusively through the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts Print Donation Program. Nonprofits can purchase an estate-stamped edition for $500 to raffle or auction at their events. If the print does not raise more than that investment, GRFA refunds the full amount. Since 2009, the program has helped more than 1,000 organizations raise over $3 million — supporting causes across the community and arts education in Louisiana.
Learn more: https://georgerodriguefoundation.org/what-we-do/print-donation/ @rodriguefoundation
Let’s go Saints. We are marching again.
#WhoDat #Saints #GeorgeRodrigue #BlueDog #WeAreMarchingAgain GRFA NewOrleans RodrigueStudios
Discover the mixed media, “MM07” a striking piece by George Rodrigue from 2012 (private collection). This 22 x 30-inch acrylic paint and silkscreen ink on illustration board is our featured Catalogue Raisonné work of the week.
If you own a unique George Rodrigue artwork, the Rodrigue family invites you to share details for inclusion in the comprehensive catalogue raisonné documenting his life’s work.
For submission guidelines and more information, visit https://georgerodrigue.com/catalogue-raisonne/ or reach out at [email protected]
