The Wolf and the Lamb

"The Wolf and the Lamb" is a fable that tells the story of a wolf and a lamb who meet by a stream. The wolf accuses the lamb of muddying the water, but the lamb denies the accusation and tries to explain that he is downstream from the wolf. The wolf continues to find fault with the lamb and eventually attacks and kills him. The moral of the story is that those who have power and wish to harm others will often find excuses to do so, even if the excuses are not valid. The fable illustrates the idea that those who have power will use it to their advantage and that those who are weaker or less powerful may suffer as a result.

Artist: Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville
Print Type: Wood Engraving
Date: C1841
Dimensions: 9 1/2 x 5 3/4"
Subject: Fantasy - Fables

Notes & Literature: Jean Ignace Isidore Gerard was a 19th century French illustrator and caricaturist who published under the pseudonym of Grandville. He has been called "the first star of French caricature's great age", and Grandville’s book illustrations described as featuring "elements of the symbolic, dreamlike, and incongruous, and they retain a sense of social commentary." "His perverse vision sought the monster in everyone and took delight in the strangest and most pernicious transfigurement of the human shape ever produced by the Romantic imagination. The anthropomorphic vegetables and zoomorphic figures that populated his cartoons anticipated and influenced the work of generations of cartoonists and illustrators from John Tenniel, to Gustave Doré, to Félicien Rops, and Walt Disney. He has also been called a "proto-surrealist" and was greatly admired by André Breton and others in the movement

Condition Report: Foxing. Verso blank.

Subject References: French Animal Fables France Life Lessons Stock ID 170