Aesop's Fables  >  Aesop's Artifacts >...> Photographs of Art Works and Memorials  >  Individual Photographs of Art Works

Individual Photographs of Art Works

 

 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

 

 

 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.

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?

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. 

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.