Shih tzu in art: how imperial China painted its lap dogs

Part 1

What paintings and objects actually show a shih tzu

Breeding these dogs was delegated to court eunuchs, who competed to produce dogs that caught the emperor's eye, and the dogs they produced had their portraits painted on wall hangings and drapes in the palace. A eunuch whose dog pleased the emperor could even be rewarded with income from rice land.

One surviving example comes from the Qing court painter Lang Shining, also known as Giuseppe Castiglione, who worked for the palace in the late seventeenth century and painted a court dog. Centuries earlier, the Tang painter Zhou Fang had already painted two small lion dogs frisking around court ladies.

Not every small dog in these paintings is a shih tzu. The Dowager Empress Cixi ran a breeding program for small palace dogs, but she also kept pugs and Pekingese, and her two named favorites, Sea Dragon and Black Jade, were both Pekingese.

Part 2

Why painters favored these dogs as subjects

These dogs are closely associated with Buddhist mythology. Lions were sacred in Buddhism, and legend held that Buddha rode a lion to earth, so dogs bred to look like lions carried that same symbolism, which is part of why the shih tzu's name itself means lion. Since lions never lived in China, artists also used carved stone guardian lions, sometimes mistaken for dog breeds, to stand in for the animal.

The Dowager Empress Cixi's court gave these dogs another reason to appear in art. She developed a breeding program devoted to the shih tzu's particular traits, and court eunuchs bred the dogs hoping to win the emperor's favor.

If you keep a small dog yourself, it is worth remembering that none of this favoritism was really about the dog's comfort.

Part 3

Spotting a shih tzu in older art versus a lookalike breed

The Lhasa Apso tends to have a longer, less square muzzle suited to a cold climate, while the shih tzu's face was shaped partly by crossing with the flatter-faced Pekingese.

A dog show in Peking in the 1930s judged these long-haired dogs together, and the judge complained that the lack of uniformity among them, despite their short muzzles, long hair, and high-carried tails, made judging almost impossible. Early shih tzus brought to the United States were often registered as Lhasa Apsos instead, which kept the two breeds confused with each other for years.

Part 4

How shih tzus moved from palace art to western portraiture

No shih tzu left China until the twentieth century, unlike pugs, which reached Holland in the eighteenth century, and Pekingese, which reached Queen Victoria in the nineteenth. Lady Brownrigg, an Englishwoman living in China, brought two shih tzus to England in 1928, and the breed's modern population traces back to about thirteen dogs imported into England and Scandinavia between 1928 and 1952. After the 1949 revolution, shih tzus remaining in China were killed because the breed was linked with wealth, which makes the dogs that had already left even more important to the breed's survival.

The English nicknamed the breed the chrysanthemum dog in the 1930s, a shih tzu club formed in England in 1934, and the Kennel Club recognized the breed in 1940. The American Kennel Club entered the shih tzu into its stud book in 1969.

Part 5

What museums and collections preserve today

Surviving Qing-era animal paintings include work by court painters such as Lang Shining, who painted a court dog for the palace in the late seventeenth century. Guardian lion statues, which are not dogs but which were sometimes mistaken for Chow Chows or Pekingese, still stand outside buildings such as the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace in Beijing.

Even a Peking Kennel Club judge in the 1930s complained that the long-haired dogs lacked uniformity, making them hard to judge. That limit is worth keeping in mind the next time you read a caption that names a painted dog with total confidence.