The Fable in The Arts
Some paintings named from the fable have been broad landscapes with small figures added in the middle plane. Salvator Rosa's Mercury and the Dishonest Woodman in the National Gallery, London, dates from about 1650. An 18th century watercolour by George Robertson (1748–88) seems to derive from this. Charles-André van Loo gives greater prominence to the figures in his Mercure présentant des haches au bûcheron in the Hôtel de Soubise. In this the god hovers in mid-air and presents the axes to the surprised and kneeling woodman. Illustrations of the fable on English chinaware draw on the woodcut in Samuel Croxall's edition of Aesop. A Wedgwood plate of about 1775 displays a red picture in a square, garlanded frame. The rim has a wavy edge printed with detached sprays of flowers. Much the same picture as there, printed in green, is used on a contemporary Liverpool tile. In the left foreground, Mercury is presenting an axe to the seated woodman. In the distance, on the opposite bank, his dishonest neighbour has raised his axe before throwing it into the river.
Read more about this topic: The Honest Woodman
Famous quotes containing the words fable and/or arts:
“In spite of the air of fable ... the public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“I too have arts and sorceries;
Illusion dwells forever with the wave.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)