The dog itself is almost lost in the vastness of the rest of the image, which is empty except for a dark sloping area near the bottom of the picture: an unidentifiable mass which conceals the animal's body.

In 1819, Goya purchased a house named Quinta del Sordo (Villa of the Deaf Man) on the banks of the Manzanares near Madrid.

Although he initially decorated the rooms of the house with more inspiring images, in time he overpainted all of them with the intense, haunting pictures known today as the Black Paintings.

Uncommissioned and never meant for public display, these pictures reflect his darkening mood with their depictions of intense scenes of malevolence, conflict, and despair.

[3] The vast swath of "sky" which makes up the bulk of the picture intensifies the feeling of the dog's isolation and the hopelessness of its situation.

Others see the dog as cautiously raising its head above the black mass, afraid of something outside the painting's field of view, or perhaps an image of abandonment, loneliness, and neglect.

[5] The opening line of Facing Goya, an opera by Michael Nyman and Victoria Hardie, is "Dogs drowning in sand," in direct reference to this painting.