From the mid-1920s, Max Beckmann frequently visited the French capital. Paris and the avant-gard painting moved to the center of his interest. He made contact with critics and gallery owners and also tried to press ahead with his career in France. Accordingly, the stays in Paris are also reflected in Max Beckmann's pictures of the late twenties and thirties. He settled there in 1929, initially he had his studio on Boulevard Brune in the 14th arrondissement and from 1930 on rue des Marronniers in the 16th arrondissement. His efforts to gain recognition finally culminated in a large exhibition at Galerie de la Renaissance in 1931.

Beckmann began to work on the painting of the two dogs before June 1930. In a letter to his gallerist Günther Franke in Munich, the slightly stressed artist confirms the express shipping of eleven pictures for a short-term exhibition at the gallery, including "Hunde" (Max Beckmann, Briefe 1925–1937, Munich 1994, p. 159). In the commentary on the letters, however, the editors noted that the picture was not part of the shipment as it had not been completed. Beckmann himself confirms this in his list of works: "Paris 1930: Hunde. Completed September 24th". He kept the picture with the two companions in his possession. After the artist died in New York in 1950, Mathilde "Quappi" Beckmann passed this work, among others, on to her local art dealer J. B. Neumann.
Paintings of this kind are rather rare in the artist's oeuvre. It's an interior scene with the focus on two dogs. They seem very close to the artist, as he paints them asleep, the dogs do not notice that they are being watched. Animals in and of themselves enliven Beckmann's pictures, fish in relatively many cases, which bear metaphorical meaning. In her book about her life with Max Beckmann, Mathilde Q. Beckmann described his relationship to animals: "[..] he loved animals, maybe not all, and he seemed to understand them. When I met him, he was fond of cat, especially the male cat his friends Fridel and Ugi Battenberg had. At that time he was fascinated by cats, while he later developed a liking for dogs. I owned a small Japanese spaniel named Chilly, which Henriette von Motesiczky had given me in Vienna before my wedding. Max soon loved the little dog as much as I did. A few years after we got married he gave me a little female Pekingese that we called Majong. When we fled to Amsterdam in 1937, we couldn't take the little things with us and left them with Mr. and Mrs. Ruppelt in Berlin, our janitor couple. They took care of them for a few months. Unexpectedly Curt Valentin and Karl Buchholz were able to take Majong with them on a plane to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, they weren‘t able to take Chilly, the little spaniel, as she was old and blind and could not have made it in the strange new surroundings we lived in at the time." (Munich 1987, p. 117).

The red-coated Pekingese Majong on the left and the black and white Japan-Chin Chilly on the right lie quite relaxed on a wicker stool and on colored cushions on the floor. Three stools form an ensemble, close to a wall with a visible base board that hints at an apartment in a classy old building. There is a newspaper underneath Majong‘s red pillow, half-way covered, the visible part of the title suggests an issue of the Parisian newspaper "L'Intransigeant", as the artist's biographer and creator of the first catalog raisonné, Erhard Göpel, noticed. Despite all randomness, this combination appears to be one of Beckmann's typical arrangements. In his numerous still lifes he depicts objects from his apartment: a clay vessel from Peru, a vase from Denmark, a stirrup jar with a snake motif, a ceremonial vessel from Cameroon, and many more. He complements the objects and stages them with flowers or instruments. Last but not least, the daily newspaper, even if Beckmann does not reveal the date, adds timely topicality to the work and can be seen a reference to the French still life paintings of Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque. Along with other artists like Juan Gris, they were the first to integrate daily newspapers and texts into Cubist still life paintings. "Hunde" – a still life? Depicted in a strong top view, they lie on the stools like animal figures that play a very personal, almost human role in the everyday life of the artist and his wife "Quappi". Years later in Amsterdam, Majong had already passed away, the Pekingese Butschy wouls enrich the artist's world of images and accompany the Beckmanns to the New World. [MvL]