Innocence between Two Thieves (c. 1835 - 1840)
by
Alfred De Dreux
De Dreux (originally Dedreux) (1810 - 1860) was a French painter, known for portraits that often included his subjects' animals; he was commercially and critically successful. Strongly influenced by British animal and sporting art, De Dreux was also known to be something of a dandy.
In this painting, the "thieves" are the two dogs, intently eyeing the crust of bread held carefully by the young girl ("innocence"). The large dog upon which the child is sitting has been indentified as both a Newfoundland and a mastiff, though in my experience the vast majority of mastiff images from the early to mid 19th Century depict mastiffs with the short coats we are familiar with in the breed today. This work was the basis of a popular print (Pierre-Amédée Varin, October 1859); surely the work's moral resonances, as well as its sentimental depiction of childhood virtue, accounted for the work's popular reception.
(You'll see this picture online elsewhere, where it is often mistitled Innocence Between Two Friends.)