. In Jean de La Fontaine's seventeenth-century fable, which this painting illustrates, a cunning monkey persuades a cat to retrieve roasting chestnuts from a fire. The term 'cat's paw,' meaning a person unwittingly duped by another, derives from this tale. Numerous engraved and painted precedents for the brutality of Landseer's interpretation existed in the work of seventeenth-century Dutch and British illustrators of La Fontaine. The fabulist's symbolic use of animals to describe the tribulations of human existence became popular among nineteenth-century romantic painters and satirists. The
. In Jean de La Fontaine's seventeenth-century fable, which this painting illustrates, a cunning monkey persuades a cat to retrieve roasting chestnuts from a fire. The term 'cat's paw,' meaning a person unwittingly duped by another, derives from this tale. Numerous engraved and painted precedents for the brutality of Landseer's interpretation existed in the work of seventeenth-century Dutch and British illustrators of La Fontaine. The fabulist's symbolic use of animals to describe the tribulations of human existence became popular among nineteenth-century romantic painters and satirists. The Cat's Paw. circa 1824. Edwin Henry Landseer Cat's Paw MIA 8247FXD
Size: 2123px × 2354px
Photo credit: © The Picture Art Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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