Giuseppe Castiglione was an Italian Jesuit brother who arrived in China in 1715 from Genoa. For many years he served at the Chinese court and he was a favourite of the Emperor Qianlong. He created a Sino-European style by combining mastery of the Chinese painting techniques with a high degree of Western realism. He was given the Chinese name, Lang Shining.

The colophon is written by the famous painter, Pu Ru. It states that when the Emperor Qianlong was given a pair of lion dogs by the government of Vietnam he asked Lang Shining to paint these for him. The date of the painting was incorrectly given by Pu Ru as the Jiachen year, corresponding to 1784, which is several years after the death of Lang Shining.