Beagle caricatures with long ears and a big nose

A merry foot hound with a nose for rabbits

Nobody is sure where the Beagle's name comes from. The AKC gives two answers: the Gaelic word beag, little, or the French word for the sound hounds make on a hunt. Small pack hounds hunted rabbit and hare in England for centuries, and by the 1500s English gentlemen kept large hounds for deer and smaller, compact ones for hares. Those smaller hounds are the ancestors of the modern Beagle.

The Beagle was a foot hound: unlike the foxhound or the Harrier, its pack could be followed on foot, so a hunter needed no horse. Imports reached America after the Civil War and rabbit hunters took to them at once. The AKC registered its first Beagle, named Blunder, in 1885, and the National Beagle Club held the first field trial in 1888. In 2025 the Beagle was seventh in AKC registrations.

The standard calls the Beagle a miniature Foxhound, solid and big for his inches, in two varieties: 13 inches and under, and over 13 up to 15. It asks for long ears set low that reach nearly to the end of the nose, large brown or hazel eyes with a gentle and pleading expression, and a tail set moderately high and carried gaily. Any hound color is allowed, and tricolor, lemon, and red and white are the familiar ones. Fanciers call the breed merry, and owners know its musical voice.

The Caricature style on a Beagle

Caricature is one of the shop's own house styles. It looks like a quick marker drawing: thick black outlines that swell and taper, sheer, slightly grainy color inside them, a plain off-white ground, and one soft halo of color low behind the dog. The head is drawn huge on a small body with short legs, and the dog's own best features are pushed for a laugh.

A Beagle gives the style a lot to push. The low-set ears that the standard wants almost to the tip of the nose grow longer still, the big open nose becomes the center of the picture, and the large brown eyes turn rounder, with a bright highlight. The gentle, pleading look the standard asks for is exactly what the drawing exaggerates, and a howl with the head thrown back reads at once as a hound.

The coat comes from the photo: a tricolor keeps its black saddle and tan head, a lemon and white keeps its pale golden ears, an old hound keeps its gray muzzle, and the white tip of the tail is there whenever the photo shows it. Give your dog's name and it is lettered across the top, as the style's own samples show.

A gift for a Beagle's people

The AKC calls the Beagle happy-go-lucky and funny, and its owners would agree: the nose that leads every walk, the howl at the door, the face beside the dinner table. A caricature is a portrait that is allowed to laugh along, which suits a dog that rarely takes itself seriously.

It fits a birthday, a puppy's first year, a family whose Beagle is the house comedian, or an old hound with a white face. It works in a kitchen, a child's room or a hallway, anywhere a serious oil portrait would feel too grand.