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:
“But there’s another knowledge that my heart destroys
As the fox in the old fable destroyed the Spartan boy’s
Because it proves that things both can and cannot be;
That the swordsmen and the ladies can still keep company;
Can pay the poet for a verse and hear the fiddle sound,
That I am still their servant though all are underground.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)