The City Rat and the Country Rat

"The City Rat and the Country Rat" is a fable that tells the story of a city rat and a country rat. The city rat invites the country rat to come and visit him in the city, and the country rat agrees. When the country rat arrives, he is impressed by the abundance of food and luxury in the city, but he is also afraid of the dangers that he encounters, such as dogs and cats. The city rat offers the country rat a feast, but they are interrupted by the arrival of a cat, and the rats must flee. The country rat decides that he would rather be poor but safe in the countryside than rich but in constant danger in the city, and he returns to his home. The moral of the story is that material wealth and comfort are not worth risking one's safety and well-being, and that sometimes a simple life can be more fulfilling and secure.

Artist: Jean Ignace Isidore G?rard 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 Dor?, to F?licien Rops, and Walt Disney. He has also been called a "proto-surrealist" and was greatly admired by Andr? Breton and others in the movement

Condition Report: Foxing. Verso blank.

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