Photographs of Art Works and Memorials

1916? Photograph of Gustav Klimt’s “Fable.” Image 12.2” x 8.7”. Overall 16.5” x 11.6”. Perhaps from fineartamerica. Starting from the right, we find here FS; FK; perhaps “Heron”; perhaps “Lion in Love”; and perhaps TMCM. There may well be other fables hidden in the painting. d

1910? Magazine excerpt featuring a line engraving of Heinrich Möller’s sculpture group of Aesop with two children. Unknown source. Researching this piece has been fascinating. First of all the attribution here is highly misleading, since Heinrich Müller was a prominent Nazi, while Karl Heinrich Möller died in 1882 after producing this sculpture. Reproductions of this very engraving are available on the web. I feature one below the magazine excerpt.

1902 Photograph of Louis Galliac’s “Homme Courant après la Fortune.” 8” x 11.4”. Braun, Clément et Cie. Unknown source. This is a touching scene of La Fontaine’s Fable (Book 7, Fable 12). One of a pair needs to seek his fortune; the other prefers to stay home. The former has a tough time of it and comes home to find his fortune. One can ask in this depiction whether the wandering partner is leaving or returning. In either case, the stay-at-home partner is eager for his return. Was this a colored painting? I cannot locate an original on the web.

2000? Photograph of the La Fontaine Memorial in Jardin du Ranelagh in Paris. Unknown source. This statue is dear to me for several reasons. The strongest is that the video team I was a part of in June, 2025 spent several hours in our last morning together doing video work on and around this statue. It pictures La Fontaine’s best known fable, FC. The original statue was erected in 1891, but it was melted down during World War II. The current bronze statue, created by French-Portuguese sculptor Charles Correia, replaced the original in 1983.

1996? Photo of the Ivan Krylov memorial in the Summer Garden, St. Petersburg. 4” x 5.7”. This is an impressive monument and I have wanted to visit it and St. Petersburg generally. I came close in Scandinavia but could not fit in the ferry trip to spend a day there. This photograph is on paper lighter than we would use for a photo.

2000? Photograph of a section of an exhibit of Abraham Lincoln as a young man. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IL. 8.5” x 11”. Unknown source. I was delighted when I first saw this picture that Abe is holding a copy of Aesop’s fables. Good for you, Abe! I will show below a view of the whole scene from which this portion is selected.

1908 “Aesop and Xantas.” Goupilgravure. Goupil & Cie. Image 6.4” x 4.2”. “Photogravure of the original painting.” $6.99 from redbuk on Ebay, Jan., ’01. Alamy offers a print of this image titled d”His Master Introduces Aesop to the Family Circle.” Aesop here approaches the anti-type of an ideal body, not quite the “human turnip” some lives call him. This is the only time t hat I have seen “Xantas” rather than “Xanthos,” “Xanthus,” or “Xantus.” Goupil was apparently also the publisher of Roberto Fontana’s “Aesop Narrates His Fables ;to the Handmaids of Xanthus,” painted in 1876.

2000? Photo Print Reproduction of Adriaan Van Stalbemt, "Landscape with Fables," 1620. Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp: oil on panel. Photo £2.50 from J. Williams, Essex, UK, through BidStart, Nov., '17. This detailed landscape invites a search for known fables. I can identify the eagle who has flown off with a lamb in the upper left and the frogs desiring a king in the right foreground. I am not sure what animal is biting into an object in the left foreground. I am surprised not to find more fables. Are there more hidden here?

2000? Photo Print Reproduction of Aesop's Fable of the Fox and Crow. Wallpaper? £2.50 from J. Williams, Essex, UK, through BidStart, Nov., '17. This is a curious image of FC in the midst of a pleasing geometric design. The arrangement reminds me of walls in Pompeii. I wonder where this segment (?) might be.

Over a mantel in the dining room of Kenmore, the estate of George Washington's sister Betty and Fielding Lewis, is a chimney piece known as "The Aesop's Fable" mantelpiece or chimneypiece. A booklet, postcard, photos, and brochures, gifts of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '92 and April, '97, present the delightful plaster work, done by a stucco worker whose identity is one of the great questions of American design history. Further, professional photographer Dan Fitzpatrick has taken some high-density photographs to help in investigating the visual history of the overmantel's motifs. Legend says that it was George Washington himself who ordered the subject of Aesop's fables for the chimney piece and even that it was he who insisted on the inclusion of FC as a reminder to his young nieces and nephews to beware of flattery. In fact, FC is the clearest fable at the center of the piece.

1980? La Tapisserie de Bayeux. Edition Ville de Bayeux. Originally 50 F in France. Bought for $10 at Paul Rohe and Son, Chicago, Dec., '92. A complete reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry in one-seventh of its original size. The original is 70 meters long and 50 centimeters high. I was delighted to find it still available three months after I had first seen it in this shop. The owner had at first insisted that I also buy The Bayeux Tapestry (which I already had for $29.95) for a combined price of $85. The chief value of this reproduction is that it is continuous--by my calculations some 28 feet long. Use this excellent reproduction with The Bayeux Tapestry (1985) and Les fables antiques de la broderie de Bayeux (1964).