The Cat's Paw, c. 1824
Sir Edwin Henry Landseerexpand_more
Oil on panelexpand_more
Gift of Dr. Roger L. Anderson in memory of Agnes Lynch Andersonexpand_more 82.47
On View in Gallery 305expand_more
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.
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Details
- Title
- The Cat's Paw
- Artist Life
- 1802–1873
- Role
- Artist
- Accession Number
- 82.47
- Curator Approved
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