The Cat's Paw, Edwin Landseer, circa 1824

In jean de la fontaine's seventeenth-century fable, which this painting illustrates, a cunning monkey persuades a cat to retrieve roasting chestnuts from a fire. The term "cat's paw," meaning a person unwittingly duped by another, derives from this tale. Numerous engraved and painted precedents for the brutality of landseer's interpretation existed in the work of seventeenth-century dutch and british illustrators of la fontaine. The fabulist's symbolic use of animals to describe the tribulations of human existence became popular among nineteenth-century romantic painters and satirists. Object Type: painting. Date: circa 1824. Place of creation: England. Dimensions: 30 × 27.1 in (76.2 × 68.8 cm). Medium: oil on panel. Collection: Minneapolis Institute of Art. Edwin Henry Landseer Cat's Paw MIA 8247FXD