George Rodrigue’s career as an artist started with dark and lush landscapes of his native Louisiana bayou. But it shifted abruptly, and profitably, when he began a series of portraits of a single subject: a melancholy mutt that came to be known as Blue Dog.

Mr. Rodrigue, who died on Dec. 14 in Houston at 69, set out to document and celebrate Cajun culture with works like “The Aioli Dinner” (1971), which depicts traditional gatherings on the lawns of plantations.

He won recognition in France and Italy. He painted portraits of famous people, including the celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme — who helped popularize Cajun food and culture in the 1970s — as well as Walker Percy, Huey Long, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Among his many commissions was a request in 1984 that he do the artwork for a collection of Cajun ghost stories, including a painting of a ghost dog, or werewolf, known in his part of the world as the loup-garou.