Engravings

2002? Prints of LM and TH by Adam Rhine. $15 each from Adam Rhine, March, '03. LM has the mouse holding a large chainsaw labeled “Rat-N-Decker”. The vibrant colors make for a very appealing fable illustration -- and a humorous glance back at the fable's rope-chopping element. TH shows the hare resting by a tree and reading a newspaper with the headline “Hare Favored to Win Race”. He is alerted by the sound of tortoise whizzing by on a motorcycle. This drawing humorously reflects the moral behind the original Aesop fable. Is there in fact something of the tortoise's shell in the image of a hard riding motorcyclist?

1850? Separated page print of two engravings, "Fortune and the Young Child" and "The Doctors." Artist not identified. Tome 1, Page 117. €10 from a bouquinist, Paris, July, '23. It will be fun to watch out for which book this page comes from. The images and the style both look familiar. The search is on!

1878 "Aesop Narrating His Fables" by R. Fontana. Published as part of the "Exposition Universelle de 1878" by Gebbie and Barrie. Gravure by Goupil Companie. Hand tinted with watercolors and sold for $35 by David Eisler (Aylesbury, Bucks, England) at Baltimore Antiquarian Fair, August, '91. The scene shows a manacled, bearded Aesop entertaining a group of delighted young women. The same engraving appears as the frontispiece to the Ariel Booklet edition (1848/1890?) of Aesop's Fables with the James text and Tenniel illustrations put out by the Knickerbocker press. Click on the picture to see a fuller version.

1880? Three framed Renard engravings by Henrich Leutemann. $40 from magnolia.boudoir through Ebay, March, '24. Two of these three steel engravings are easy to identify and enjoy: FK and "The Ass and the Lapdog." The seller identifies the scenes as coming from La Fontaine. The third image puzzled me. It is identified as "Reynard and Merknau/Reineke und Meiknau." I could not identify who Merknau is until some searching through German sites brought me to "Merkenau" the talkative crow. This illustration faces page 200 in an edition of Reineke composed by Julius Eduard Hartmann and published by Payne in Leipzig. In Canto VII, Merkenau describes to King Noble how he and his wife came upon the apparently dead Reineke. Merkenau's wife came close to his snout to see if there were some sign of life. Reineke snapped off her head!

1850? Three matted circular colored engravings of fables of Jean de La Fontaine. €150 from lefennec205 through Ebay, Sept., '22. Our collection has abundant editions using black-and-white illustrations from François Bouchot, but here are three lovely engravings in color. I fear that it is hard on the web to render the detail I find in this well-executed illustrations!